


Playback, Delete and Rewind

by fiendingforthesunshine



Series: All Night (Or A Hundred Years) [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Deaf Clint Barton, I mean they've barely even held hands yet, Multi, Muteness, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychic Abilities, Recovery, Slow Burn, Teenage Bucky Barnes, Teenaged Clint Barton, Torture, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 33,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiendingforthesunshine/pseuds/fiendingforthesunshine
Summary: The days in between Phil and Clint’s unceremonious first meeting, the subsequent escape and (most) of the days that followed.This is a follow up to the first part of this series, you will want to read that first.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Phil Coulson, Clint Barton & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Series: All Night (Or A Hundred Years) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1750651
Comments: 103
Kudos: 130





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to update with the same frequency as the first part of this series but a lot of Hold Tightly Until We Fall Back to Ground was written before I started posting and this one is pretty fresh.

Phil stumbled into the safe house, the key still in the door handle and everything, and scanned the living room with his eyes suspiciously. It wasn’t this quiet when he left.

“Tony?” Phil pulled his key out, shut the door and then dropped all his crap on the wobbly coffee table. 

The safe house wasn’t much. A small one bedroom house just across the border between New York and Canada. No mailbox, a barely working mini fridge and a microwave produced before the beginning of the second civil war. No bed, or even a mattress, just a couch that fit half a grown adult. 

At least the heat worked.

The only thing that wasn’t dusty and half-broken in the house was the 10 year old desktop computer. It was fully broken, or had been when Phil left, and only dusted off because Tony had immediately thrown himself full throttle into fixing the machine while they were here.

“Tony?” Phil called, a bit more serious this time. He couldn’t feel anyone’s thoughts in the immediate area, their closest neighbor was half a mile away, but that didn’t mean Tony wasn’t here. Tony didn't sleep much, he was worse than Phil in that respect, but when he slept he meant it and Phil had never been able to read his thoughts while he was asleep. 

Phil sighed, toed off his shoes and thought about whether or not it was really worth it to wake Tony up now or do it after his shower. 

“Stark!” Phil shouted one last time, smirking when he heard Tony’s head hit the underside of the desk he’d been tucked under. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Coulson?!” Tony howled, standing up behind the desk and glaring at Phil across the dark room. Phil shrugged and flipped on the light switch, the main light only illuminated half the main living area, of course. 

“Is the computer working?” Phil asked as an answer.

Tony grumbled and taped a few keys, the computer screen coming to life, “Who do you think I am? Of course it's working,” he looked up at Phil and squinted his eyes, “Why are you bleeding?” 

Phil sighed, “I need you to find someone, a psy who spent time in a training center as recently as last year. His name is Clint, didn't get a last name.” 

“The first aid kit is above the sink, don't bleed on the couch.” 

Phil nodded and headed to the “kitchen”, pulling the first aid kit out of the cabinet above the dripping sink and rummaging through the contents. Three bandaids, a small roll of gauze and a half-full bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Great.

There was no freezer in the kitchen, just the aforementioned mini fridge, so Phil opted for a slightly cooler than room temperature beer from the shelf in the door. He leaned up against the counter and held it against his forehead. 

After a few minutes he set the can down and pulled out the bottle of hydrogen peroxide to clean out the cut on his wrist from the handcuffs. 

Tony worked, blissfully silent, on the other side of the room while Phil cleaned himself up as best as he could. 

“I got him.” Tony muttered from behind the screen, snapping his fingers to get Phil's attention.

“Yeah?” Phil responded, finishing up bandaging his wrist as he walked over to stand behind Tony at the desktop. 

“Not through government files, not yet. But it sounds like some do-good private citizens have been writing articles for a BBC outlet in Toronto,” Tony swiped his hand through the air and a tab pulled up on the screen, “Two nurses have been volunteering their time at a community center in the city, they talk specifically about a few psy kids, one of them is definitely him.” 

Phil scanned the article, “There's no names in the articles, how do you know?” 

Tony put his hand on his chest dramatically and scoffed, “you wound me.” 

He swiped his hand up to reveal another tab on the screen that looked like an email inbox, “They put the kids' names in their email notes and in the rough draft of the articles, ‘Clint - telepath and energy manipulator, neural network, around 17 years old, sweet but closed off’ need I go on?” 

Phil rolled his eyes in return at Tony and leaned in closer to read the email that was pulled up. 

“Is this kid why you look like you lost a fight with a sumo wrestler?” 

“Next time they offer a mission and you're on it? I'm turning it down.” Phil muttered as he kept reading. There weren't any pictures but the story fit from what Phil had seen and heard. Teenage kid, the network, lived in the city with a young couple, the community center. All things he'd seen when he started reading the kid during his own interrogation.

It took Phil way too long to notice that the kid was stronger than he thought. 

And it took even longer for Phil to realize that this wasn't just another psy interrogator from the east.

“I think he's one of ours.”

“Ours?” Tony parroted, the computer screen went black and Tony pressed a few keys to bring up a database, “I thought you were just doing standard recon at the base, not going into the city.”

Phil shrugged one shoulder, “Yeah, me too. Got picked up by some guards who had a tier 3 telepath, the kid was brought in to interrogate me.” 

Tony moved his hands in a ‘go on’ gesture as he continued focusing on the screen and Phil continued, “I read the kid while he was reading me. He had memories of the desert and as far as I know there’s no deserts out here. When he realized what I was doing he turned me over.”

“Damn punk,” Tony muttered. 

“He’s doing his job. And if he’s one of ours it's not like he’s got a choice anyway.” 

Phil leaned against the wall and wished he had brought the cool beer over here with him, his headache was starting to pick up again, “The base doesn’t house a training center but it’s central to the city, that’s a good place to start for any info on him.” 

New York City was a hotbed of psychic kids being tied in with the government, the base Phil had gone out to was central to the eastern military planning in the north. Security was tight.

“Already on it, _boss_ ,” Tony answered with an extra bite in his words. Phil rolled his eyes and lumbered over to the couch now that he was cleaned up. 

He let the sound of Tony’s typing wash over him, his eyes closed against the weak overhead light. Not sleeping, just resting, for now. 

“The guards beat the shit out of him after he told them I was a psy,” Phil murmured, finally calm for the first time in hours, “One of them was Secretary Ross, I think he expected the kid to know right off the bat that I was a psy. Maybe he thought the kid was lying.”

Tony continued typing, stopping for only a few seconds when Phil started talking, Phil could imagine his fingers hovering over the keys while he listened. 

“It’s been almost two weeks since anyone has spotted another one of our kids, Fury is gonna have a conniption if you’re right _and_ you didn't bring the kid back with you.”

Phil sighed heavily and rubbed his hands over his face roughly. Phil hadn’t even been thinking about trying to pull the kid out, was more worried about avoiding the business end of the guard’s guns. Getting caught had thrown him off.

It wasn’t like there was a game plan for any of this… these… these rescue missions. Pulling western kids out of _goddamn slavery_. That's what this was.

They'd only been running these missions for less than a year. Small teams across the border, recon at a base, find a kid and do your best to get them out before anyone knows any better. It's hell and they've only been successful half the time, at best. 

“I should've tried to pull him out,” Phil groaned.

“With no team? Right. Good luck with that Rambo,”

Phil opened his eyes up at the ceiling and nodded to himself, “Fury’ll give me a team and I've already, unfortunately, got you.”

Tony barked out a laugh, “Let's call him up, I want to see this.” Tony tapped a few keys and Phil heard the ringing of their internal call system from across the room. He dragged himself off the couch and crossed the room, ready to face his second beat down of the day.


	2. Chapter 2

Phil didn’t look down and didn’t scuff his feet on the ground like a petulant child while Fury talks, he didn’t. Instead, he stared at the far right corner of the computer screen and took it all like a grown up because that’s his job.

Fury isn’t angry, not anymore than he usually is, just annoyed at the level of trouble Phil has brought down on all their heads. They’ve only managed to bring back a few kids at this point and without families they’ve all mostly been relocated to remote places with other pys to recover in peace. These missions aren’t common knowledge, but the more they mess them up the more likely it is that the East will figure out what they’re doing, and the more likely they are to try something more blatant. 

Although Phil doesn’t think you can do anything more blatant than stealing kids from another country to fuel your authoritarian rule. 

Phil’s from the West, Portland born and bred. His parents too. He grew up watching news of the second civil war on his parents tv and reading it in the newspapers on Sunday mornings. By the time he was old enough to get involved the war was long over. He joined the military anyway, most of his time spent as a border guard down in Louisiana, right on the ocean. 

He was six months from finishing out his last term, finally ready to settle back down in Portland, when the first kid went missing. 

When the first news report came out of a psy kid going missing and their immediate family being found dead in the home, he called his mom and had the entire security system in his parent’s house upgraded personally. 

At twenty-four reports Phil called Tony and asked him to clear any mention of his family out of the military database and as many public databases as he could find. 

Once the number of kids missing reached into the triple digits, Phil had already signed on for another term and had tracked down any person working in military intelligence to see what he could do to help. 

“Coulson?!” Fury called out, surprisingly clear for how old the safe house webcam and computer were. Phil blinked back into the present and nodded, trying to figure out what he should’ve been listening to. 

“Yes, sir?” 

“Have either of you been able to locate the psy in the system?” 

Tony perked up from where he was sitting, leaned far away out of view of the screen working off his tablet to avoid Fury’s ire, he continued typing on the tablet but slid closer to Phil to be seen on the webcam, “Clint Barton from Los Alamos, New Mexico. Around 17 years old, went missing a year and five months ago. The thirty-fifth kid overall and the second kid in New Mexico.” 

“And the family?”

“Dead, sir.” Phil answered quietly. 

Fury sighed, “Find everything you can in the East military records. I’ll send you a team in the morning. Start planning now.” The screen cut out without a goodbye and Phil slunk back over to the couch to drop himself onto the cushions. 

“You know, his mom was from New York? Moved to New Mexico as a kid during the war,” Tony mumbled from the other side of the room. 

“Did you know her?” Phil asked, not exactly stunned that Tony would hold some information back from his quick report to Fury. 

Tony had grown up in New York City. Well away from the war and well away from anything that could’ve made his life difficult at all thanks to his parent’s money. Would’ve stayed that way too if Tony hadn’t started building robots at 6 years old that were capable of more than anything his father had built after decades working in the tech sector. 

Once his parents realized he was a technopath, and a scary-good one at that, they sent him away to a boarding school that was paid enough to look the other way until someone offered them more than that to hand him over to the government to study him. 

It wasn’t until a few years after that that his parent’s butler managed to sneak him out of the government “school” that he was being kept at and across the border, first to Colorado and then to Southern California, but the damage had already been done. 

Phil could still see the faded scars on the back of Tony’s neck and the faint black lines spiderwebbed across his skull when Tony shook his head in answer.

“Think that’s how they knew to grab him?” 

“There’s no pattern, I’ve looked. Out of the three-hundred plus kids that got taken, only fifty-two have ties to the East, over a hundred-and-fifty kids have never even left the state they grew up in. It’s…” Tony glared down at his screen, “There’s no order to it, to any of it.” 

Phil nodded, “Want a beer?” 

Tony hummed a noncommittal answer in response and Phil walked over to the minifridge. He grabbed the beer he’d been using for his headache and opened it for himself before walking another can across the room for Tony. He’s nice like that, no matter what Tony wants to say. 

Tony had put his tablet back on the desk but the screen was flipping through pages and pages of database as he stared up at the desktop screen, his eyes glassy. Along with what he was working on, there was a small screen playing live video from a press conference in San Francisco. 

“Oh, the president’s speech, that’s tonight.”

Tony nodded, eyes flicking over to the video and then to the beer. He took a swig and then sat it back down next to his workstation. 

Phil sat back down on the couch with determination this time, he wasn’t getting back up again. The audio for the press conference slowly increased until Phil could hear it without straining from his spot across the room. 

“--Our nation is in mourning over the children that are lost, but we are not prepared to use violence over diplomacy in the fight to get them back.” What a joke. Phil tried not to care about politics but he knows who signs his checks and he’s ready to do whatever it takes to finish the mission, diplomacy or not. 

“Let me be clear. The Western military is not involved in any activities in the East, we have not crossed the boundary set in place after the treaties were signed to end the war. We will continue to do the work to get our children back safely and without harm.” 

Phil scoffed and Tony let his beer clang down loudly on the desk, “Doesn’t he know not to lie by now? I mean, what’s the point? It’s not like the East won’t just twist his words anyway.”

“We are a peaceful nation, we fought hard for that and we will not stoop to the level of the East in retaliation--” The audio cut out and Tony clicked a few keys on his keyboard to close the webpage playing the speech. 

“How many votes did this guy get last year?” Tony hissed. 

“Over sixty precent, my mom and dad loved the guy.”

Tony huffed, “Disown them.”

Phil threw his empty beer can across the room to try and bean Tony in the head but missed by a few inches, knocking Tony’s beer off the desk instead. Tony yelped when the spray hit him across the face and Phil sunk deeper into the couch, “Any more information on the kid?”

“The community center has a pretty sophisticated records system,” Tony answered, still glaring at Phil as he looked around his station for something to wipe the beer off his face, “The kid takes an english class there twice a week and they’ve got a pretty nice medical outfit for a place of their size. If he’s beat up like you said he is, they're probably keeping him there as long as Secretary Ross didn’t keep him or take him to the base.” 

“Let’s hope we’re that lucky.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's... been a week. To say the least. Very hard to sit down and write but sometimes that's all you can do. Please donate to your local Black Lives Matter group or attend a protest or support your local black-owned restaurants bookstores or retail places if you can. Everyone is able to help. #NoJusticeNoPeace

“I still can't believe this kid scored a ten and a half on Energy Manipulation and has no technopathic abilities to speak of,” Tony mock-whispered as they moved down the side street in a tight formation. His complaint was muffled due to the mask covering his nose and mouth, black stealth uniforms for an urban invasion in the middle of the morning. Whatever works.

Phil rolled his eyes and didn't answer, the soldier leading the group huffed a surprised laugh but kept his eyes on the path in front of them. 

“I'm just saying, there's something wrong with that. That's like being able to read animals but then not be able to read people.” 

Another eye roll, “That's almost sixty percent of tier 4 telepaths, Tony.” Phil made a face, rolling through his mental list of CCTV cameras on the streets around the community center. He tapped the soldier in front, “Turn left here, into the alley.”

Tony had dug in deep the past two days to find more information on the kid while Phil had started planning their mission into the city to grab the kid and get out as quickly as possible. 

Secretary Ross and Undersecretary Pierce-- because of course Phil had to run into a kid that was under the thumb of two of the most well known and high up members of the eastern military, had him taken back to the city after Phil had escaped. Tony was absolutely certain that he was at the community center based on a few emails he'd intercepted.

Fury had sent them three soldiers. Tony and Phil would be responsible for getting Clint out while the soldiers were defense and extra protection. Tony had been streaming the local news networks every night and all they could talk about was the “fugitive rebel soldier” that was “on the loose” in their “peaceful city”, extra protection is exactly what they'd need if they weren't able to get in and out quickly.

“Maybe the report is wrong,” Tony mused. 

“The report isn’t wrong, Tony. You’re not getting another technopath--” Phil answered, stopping short when the soldier leading the group held his hand up for silence. The team stopped and Phil’s eyes shot up the alley they'd turned into to see someone standing at the end of it. 

“That's Sam Wilson, the director at the community center.” Tony mumbled, a stoic and professional picture of him came up in Phil's mind from what he’d seen in Tony’s research and Phil reached out across the alley. 

_We're not here to hurt you or anyone else. We’re here for Clint._

Phil then pushed out his memories of his brief time with Clint, the soldiers attacking Clint and Phil, tried to pepper it in with Clint’s memories and his own. He was going to take Clint home, he owed him that much. Tried to make it so Wilson would believe him that they were coming to do something good, not to cause trouble. Not for him, anyway.

Wilson blinked and looked behind himself to see who else might be out in the alley before looking down at the team again. After a few moments he nodded and held his hands up in a show of surrender and slowly stepped backwards, opening the door behind him and slipping inside. 

They moved forward at Phil's command and were soon at the building. Phil reached out to listen to who was in the building, building himself a map to overlay on top of the blueprints Tony had found. 

“North side, towards the back. Fourth window.” 

The soldier, Phil, second soldier, Tony, and the third soldier in the back moved swiftly down the alley to the north side of the building in their tight line and reached the window Phil had mentioned. He nodded in confirmation and they spread out, just out of view. 

Phil could see the energy building in Tony’s hand, ready to shatter the window and give them access to the building. Just as Tony was about to push it forward Phil raised his hand, “Stop!” 

Tony jerked and shot a look back at Phil, “What?!”

“Ross is here… and Pierce. They’ve got a team.” Phil closed his eyes and reached into the room to try and determine where everyone was, “At least four soldiers along with them, our psy and four civilians. Keep everything tight.” 

The other soldiers nodded and Tony pushed thoughts of agreement towards Phil before moving forward again.

Tony pushed his psychic energy through the window and followed quickly behind the now shattered glass, pushing the energy out further to create a barrier between the team and the larger team of those from the eastern military.

Phil and the two other soldiers followed quickly behind and Phil breathed a quick sign of relief when he saw that Clint was on their side of the barrier. Pure luck.

The others that had been in the room were on the other side, a maelstrom of hollering and limbs flying as either side tried to gain the upper hand. Tony's research provided Phil's mind with who they were.

The woman was Natasha Romanov, the partner of Steve Rogers, a guy with an impressive list of misdemeanor crimes. Steve Rogers, who had been forced by Pierce to take Clint in. Sam Wilson, who Phil now realized had been trying to stall for them.

And a kid. About Clint’s age, long hair, one arm and _hell_ \-- was he _biting_ the soldier?

He was an unknown. Tony had found that there was a kid hanging around Clint and they had been guessing that he might, somehow, be a previous connection to the west but that was all. 

Steve shouted from the other side of the barrier, bucking against the soldier who was restraining him. Natasha kicked her foot backwards into the soldier behind her.

Tony pulled down his mask, “Is this him?” He looked back at Phil. Clint had realized by now that they were there for him and glanced between Phil and the scuffle on the other side of the room as Phil pulled his own mask down.

Ross took a step towards Wilson who had stopped fighting and instead was working towards becoming as deadweight as possible for the soldier trying to hold him up. 

“No rebels, hm?” 

Wilson gave a token protest to try and break free before answering, “They broke in through the window, you think they'd do that if I let them walk in the front door?” 

Good man. 

Phil added “protect Sam Wilson” to his to-do list.

Clint had pushed himself up against the wall and Phil stepped forward, “Hey, do you remember me?” 

Clint nodded. 

“It’s Clint, right? Clint Barton? From Los Alamos, New Mexico. Your dad was a doctor and your mom stayed at home with your and your older brother. My name is Phil. This is Tony,” he gestured at Tony who was keeping his eye on the barrier, “We’re from the west and we’re gonna take you home.”

_How do you know that?_

Phil blinked, surprised that Clint could still focus his thoughts to send something out into the ether with the network on. He recovered quickly, “Once I got out I looked you up, Tony helped. It was a pretty quick turn around, but we’ve been trying to find other psys, like you, ones that got taken.”

Clint looked at Phil wide-eyed and then looked back at his friends behind the barrier. Pierce stepped forward and Clint stumbled backwards towards Phil to try and get away from him despite the barrier.

Phil raised his voice, “They can’t stop you, Clint. You’ll be safe with us.”

Pierce took another step forward, examining the barrier with interest, and spoke, “You go with them and I’ll have each one of your friends killed myself.” 

Phil knew he meant it. Phil also knew that Pierce thought way more of himself than was true. Clint, however, didn't know that. He shook his head and took a step closer to the barrier. 

Phil opened his mouth to try and say anything convincing to the kid and stopped once one of the soldiers grabbed the other kid tight enough to cut off his breathing and pulled a gun up to his head.

“I can start with your old friend, if you like. Bucky, isn’t it?” It almost sounded like Pierce was just mildly entertained with all of this, his anger simmering under the surface. 

The kid--Bucky, had his eyes squeezed shut tight and squirmed a bit under the forearm tightening around his neck. The soldier grunted and pushed the gun up against Bucky’s head hard enough to bruise.

When Clint stepped forward, just a few inches away from the barrier the other side of the room exploded. 

Phil felt the rush in his mind. 

Bucky was psychic too. 

He'd pushed the soldier away from himself, turning in towards the gun to push his hand out to put him on the ground. His eyes were still shut but his arm was still instinctually held out to defend himself. 

_Telekinetic_ , one of the many people in the room thought, almost in awe.

“Bucky?” Steve asked. Everyone in the room had paused.

“Coulson, you said there was only one psy, what gives?” Tony stepped back towards the window to gain some more ground and Phil looked towards Clint before sending a curious glance across the room.

“I thought he was the only one,” Phil muttered.

He noticed the mood in the room shift. The soldiers holding Steve and Natasha had let go and were now aiming their weapons towards Bucky, their thoughts a vague mush of fear and anger.

Ross let out a barking laugh, “Alex, someone has been holding out on us!” He called, loud enough to be heard over the room. 

The soldier that had let go of Steve stalked towards the teenager and he pushed his hand out again. There wasn't any visual of the energy, like with the barrier that Tony had created but the effect was similar. The soldier fell to the ground and coughed, curling in on himself to try and get his breath back. He pushed back again when the soldier tried to get up and this time held his hand out, the soldier growled and pushed against the invisible energy but he couldn't stand up. 

“Tranquilize him, we’ll take both of them back,” Pierce responded quickly, pulling his own gun out from his holster and aiming it towards Bucky.

Bucky pushed out again, this time with enough energy to push Pierce back far enough that his back crashed against the barrier. Steve had finally pulled himself out of his shock at the turn of events and had turned the tables, grabbing one of the soldiers by the forearms and hoisting him up against the wall. Sam had grabbed Natasha, disappearing down the hallway.

Tony flinched and Phil could hear his anxiety before he spoke, “Coulson, we gotta go. I can only keep this up for so long, especially with this kid in play now,” Tony hissed.

Phil held his hand out to Clint, “Come on. Come with us.”

Clint shook his head again and Bucky shouted from across the room, “Go, Clint! You should go with them!”

“Hey, kid,” Tony took a brief moment to look away from the barrier over at Clint, “Either you go, or that guy kills you. I’m not sure you want that.”

Clint glared at him and gestured over towards where Bucky was trying to hold his own against the soldiers, Phil felt the spiky tendrils of Clint's thought reach out against the room.

_They’ll kill him instead!_

“Tony and another one of my team will stay, they’ll help your friends. You have to believe me,” Tony nodded in agreement when Phil was done talking and held his hands up, fingers splayed out, and watched as the barrier started to come down from the top.

“We have to go now, Clint.”

Clint spared one last look over at Bucky before Phil pulled him out through the window they’d come in.


	4. Chapter 4

Phil spotted Clint trying to hide a yawn behind his hand, the third in the past five minutes, out of the corner of his eye as he drove. 

“We’ve still got about an hour, you can sleep if you want,” he offered. 

Clint shifted in the seat and shook his head. 

Phil nodded, “The safe house is shielded by a local group of psys, we’ll stay there overnight, have you ever been to Canada?” Clint shook his head again and Phil continued, “I hadn’t either, until I joined the military. I’m from Portland originally.” 

Clint turned his head to look at Phil and blinked. Phil kept his eyes on the road but noticed that he was being given a hard stare. 

_I know someone from Portland._

It was still surprising that the kid could push out a thought with the network still on. That, and that Phil was able to hear it so clearly once he let his mind reach out. 

The first time they'd met, Phil could feel the walls Clint had built up around his mind. They were strong, forged in terrible circumstances he could only imagine. Even so, Phil found a crack and forced it open. Once the first wall came down, the rest fell with it and even though Phil had spotted the leather anchor on Clint's wrist it was clear that it wasn't doing much.

With the network on Clint, Phil couldn't hear anything. It wasn't just that there was a wall, it was that there was nothing. But somehow Clint could push out, however brief and inconsistent. It seemed, to Phil at least, that he could only be heard by other psys. One good look at Clint, outside of the jailhouse and away from any fighting, and Phil could see that the audible silence wasn’t just quiet out of shyness or fear.

Tony was going to have a field day with him. 

“Really? Family?” Phil asked.

Clint shook his head and then shrugged. 

“We’re headed to a base in Montana after this, after that maybe we could find them for you.” 

The teenager shrugged again and they fell into silence. The sun had set a little while ago, light enough that Phil didn’t have to strain his eyes but dark enough that he turned on the headlights as he led the car off the highway onto an access road. 

“Tony is on his way with your friends. He had to take another route, it'll be safer for them that way. The soldiers that were with us are from the east.” 

_Rebels?_

Phil nodded, “They're a good resource, helped us find more information about you. They're also better used to operating under the radar, Tony and your friends are in good company.” 

Clint nodded in response and turned to look back out the window.

By the time Phil pulled up to the house and parked the car he had been pretending to ignore the fact that Clint had been falling asleep and jolting himself awake every few minutes for a while. He unbuckled his seatbelt and stood outside the car to stretch briefly while Clint scrambled out of the car on the other side to stand awkwardly in the grass. 

He pulled his bag out of the car, leaving his tactical gear in the backseat, and gave Clint the “come on” gesture. They trudged up to the house and Phil unlocked the front door to let them both in. 

Phil toed off his shoes and dropped his bag on the floor by the door while Clint looked around the barren living room.

“I've got to call my boss,” Phil called across the room, “There's some protein bars and maybe some fruit in the kitchen on the counter. Eat something.” 

Clint nodded and Phil waited until he saw him pick a protein bar out of the pile before he pulled his phone out of his bag and dialed his number to the secure line Tony set up. 

The line rang twice and then Phil was greeted with a gruff, “Fury.” 

“Director, it’s Coulson.” 

“I expected a call three hours ago.” 

Phil sighed and rubbed his free hand over his head, “We had a bit of a setback. I need an extraction team for two from the safe house coordinates,” something squeaked in the background, probably Fury’s comfortable office chair, and Phil waited him out. 

“I know you well enough to know that you didn’t leave Stark and the team I sent you behind without good reason,” Phil could imagine him leaning back in his chair and stretching his hands out in an open gesture, “The line is secure, Coulson.” 

“Tony and one of the team stayed behind. The two attachments you sent from the eastern rebels will report back to their captain. The kid wouldn't leave without knowing that the people he'd stayed with in New York would be safe,” Phil spared at glance at Clint but he was facing away, looking out the kitchen window above the sink into the darkness, “Tony called me once they got out, they'll be taking the southwest route to cross the border.” 

“I imagine Stark will appear when he appears.” 

Phil scoffed, “He's never exactly been one for following protocol, sir.” 

“What intel do you have on the people coming with Stark? More missing psys from the west?” 

“No,” Phil shook his head, “The couple that took him in along with the unknown teenager that kept popping up in Tony’s searches were at the community center when we made contact along with Ross and Pierce.” 

Fury hissed under his breath.

“The other kid is enhanced, sir. We couldn't leave them there and Barton wouldn't have left without assurances.” 

“I'll start pushing for emergency approvals. Extraction team is on their way, ETA two hours,” Phil nodded to himself and was about to hang up before Fury cleared his throat to speak again. 

“Good job, Coulson. You made the right call.” 

Phil waited a beat.

“Thank you, sir.” 

Phil hung up and slid the phone back in his pocket. Clint was still standing in the kitchen, the last bite of a protein bar in one hand and the empty wrapper in the other. He stared at a point just above Phil's shoulder once he'd come over. 

“The trash can is over by the desk,” Phil held his hand out to take the wrapper. Clint dropped it in Phil's hand and stayed in his spot.

“The bed is garbage but again, you should get some rest before we get picked up.” 

Clint shrugged and popped the last bite into his mouth and leaned against the kitchen counter. Phil knew teenage bravado when he saw it and for a minute he wished that he could get into Clint’s mind and ask him what he was thinking about. 

Phil looked around the room and spotted the next best thing, a notebook he’d left on the desk next to Tony’s seat that he’d used for doodling while Tony scoured databases spanning the whole of North America. He grabbed it and gave it a little wave in Clint’s direction, “Can you write?” 

The teenager blinked, first at Phil, then at the notebook. He nodded and walked over to the desk to pick it up out of Phil’s hand. 

“I’m sure you have questions.” 

Clint’s chicken scratch wasn’t as bad as Tony’s, when he bothered to hand-write at all, but it was getting there. 

What’s in Montana?

He turned the notebook back over for Phil to see, “The base I’m stationed at. Tony and I are part of a team that runs covert missions to bring kids like you back to the West. I’m sure you know you’re not the only one.” 

Clint nodded. He thought longer, the pencil hovering over the paper before he wrote again. 

And then?

“Well. We have a team of doctors that have practice getting networks out safely. With your consent they’ll take it out and help you readjust. Some of the kids we’ve brought back have gone to extended family, others picked a city to try and settle down in to start over.” 

Clint wrote, and then scribbled out, and then wrote again before handing the notebook back. 

My friends?

“My boss, the director of the program, is working on paperwork to grant them emergency residence in the West. It’s up to you guys what you do after they meet us at the base.” 

Clint smiled down at the paper and huffed what Phil thought must’ve been a laugh before responding. 

They’ll never agree on what to do.

Phil laughed too, when he read it and shrugged, “You’ve got time, there’s no rush. We’ve only just started trying to get kids back, it’s not like there’s any rules about this.” 

Clint nodded and closed the notebook, the pencil tucked in the page he’d been writing on, he waved it the way Phil had and raised his eyebrows in a question. Phil held his hands out, “Oh, sure. Yeah, keep it. You’ll need it for now at least.” 

Phil pushed away from the desk and crossed the room over to the kitchen to get a protein bar of his own while Clint settled down on the couch, the notebook tucked tightly in his hands.


	5. Chapter 5

Clint had never been on a plane before. Hell, before all this he'd only ever left New Mexico once to go to the beach for a week with his family during a long winter that wouldn't let up. 

Bucky loved flying, of course. Would spend the whole first week after landing in the West talking about the flights they took to make it over. One time the pilot even let him look around the cockpit when he was young enough to actually pull off the sweet and innocent look. 

Phil had asked if Clint had ever flown while he was cleaning up the safe house, turning the computer off, shuffling papers into binders and putting all the leftover food in his backpack. Clint had indicated that no, he hadn’t, and Phil told him that the best way to clear the East and get out without running across any extra surveillance was by jet. 

Bucky was going to be so jealous of Clint.

Clint knew what planes looked like, obviously. Had seen them at the airport. Bucky always flew on the massive passenger jets that were packed full of crying babies, nervous grandmas and loud tourist groups from Europe. Told Clint everything about them and when the family computer was free he’d make them watch how planes were made. 

This one was different.

When the jet landed straight down in the field behind the safe house Clint tucked the notebook tight to his side and closed his eyes against the wind it whipped up around them. He could’ve just as easily gotten lost in the loud chaos for hours but Phil tapped him on the shoulder. 

Clint opened his eyes and followed Phil up to the back of the jet, which was now opened wide with a long slanted bridge for them to walk up and inside. 

Bucky was going to be _so jealous_ of Clint.

Clint followed a step behind Phil, smiled tightly as he introduced him to the pilot, the co-pilot and an officer they’d picked up on the way who was finishing up another mission. He buckled himself into the seat next to Phil and tried to hide how the tight restraints made his ribs sting. 

The jet was small enough that Clint could hear the pilot and co-pilot going through their checklist while everyone else got settled. Bucky had always said that take off was the best part, rising up into the sky and once Clint felt the plane move he was inclined to agree. 

There weren't any windows to look out of from where Clint was seated, but he could imagine the view. Clint leaned back against the seat and tucked the notebook in between his arms and the armrest. 

He hadn’t realized the hum of the jet had lulled him to sleep until Phil was gently shaking him awake. 

Clint tumbled out of the jet behind Phil, trying to blink the sleep from his eyes. The sun was creeping up behind the mountains and Clint was momentarily thrown back to New Mexico, back to home. 

“Clint?” Phil interrupted Clint’s thoughts, “This is my boss, Director Fury. He’s in charge of… all this.” He gestured back at the plane and to himself and to the bustling base around them even though it was barely morning. 

Clint looked up from his shoes. And then kept looking up.

About a month ago he hit a growth spurt. It’s crazy how an almost steady sleep schedule and consistent food can do that for a guy, huh?

Clint could still remember how Natasha and Steve had spent a few days pulling together a few shirts in a bigger size and a pair of shoes two sizes up while Clint spent those days trying to get all his newly long limbs in order. 

Despite it all Clint was still shorter than Steve and Pierce and even Bucky. 

This guy, Director Fury, was taller still. Clint had to tilt his head up to look him in the eyes with how close they were all standing. 

Aside from the height he was even more physically imposing than Ross or Pierce ever were. A stern look was on his face, he wore all black instead of the standard military uniform everyone else was wearing and he had an eye patch. He didn’t offer a handshake and for that, Clint decided they would get along.

“Welcome to Bozeman, Montana, Mr. Barton. We have a medic bay on site, Coulson told me you and him both got roughed up pretty good a few days ago.” 

Was it really only just a few days ago? Did everything really change that much in just a few days? Clint interrogating Phil. The community center and Bucky with his telekentic abilities. It felt like it had been ages but it had been barely a week. Not even. 

Clint nodded and the Director nodded back, “I’ll let you two settle in before we talk about what happened,” He turned to Phil, “Coulson. Have you talked to Banner? He’ll be waiting on you.” 

“We’ll go see him after the medics,” Phil responded. 

Clint fell into step behind Phil and kept one eye on him and where they were going and one eye on the rest of the base. Most people didn’t give them a second glance, and if they did it was quick, their eyes sliding over Director Fury, then knowingly to Phil and then skipping over Clint with an emotion on their face that Clint couldn’t place. 

He let the medics check on the stitches the nurse had done at the community center, ignored the pitying look they gave him when they saw the blue and purple of his ribs. Once they were done Clint slid off the bed and waited for them to finish with Phil. 

“You good?” Phil asked as he pulled his t-shirt back on over his head. Clint held the notebook close to his side and fiddled with the spine before nodding. 

“Bruce Banner is one of the guys Tony and I work with. I was hoping you could let him look at the network so he can start making plans for how to get it off, if you’re comfortable with that?” 

Clint followed Phil down the hallway and out onto the base again. 

They reached their destination quickly and Clint stood in the doorway while Phil talked to someone in the middle of the room they’d walked to. 

Once they were done the other man strode up to Clint and stopped a few feet away. 

“Hi Clint, I’m Bruce. I’ll probably wait until Tony gets here to do the technical work of taking the network off but I can at least get started on mapping it, if you want?” 

Clint didn’t know what that would involve but Bruce didn’t have any medical tools or instruments. Just his hands, steady at his side as he waited for Clint to sit down in front of him. So he did, dropping the notebook to the floor and tucking it under the chair with his feet. He kept the toes of his left foot on the edge of it so he could still make sure it was there. 

Clint trusted Phil, for what it was worth. He trusted Bruce too, as much as he could. But nothing could stop Clint from shuddering when Bruce touched the back of Clint’s neck. He was talking but he was standing to Clint’s right and of course Clint couldn’t make out what he was saying. 

It was fine. They were in Montana, hours of driving and a whole plane ride away. Clint was safe here. It was safe. Bucky, Steve and Natasha would be there soon. They could make a plan from there and everything would be fine. 

_“Your trainer seems to think you can’t be trusted, young one. You’ve behaved plenty well today.”_

_“You might be one of the most well-behaved enhanced children I’ve ever met. So many are wild beasts.”_

_Hands wandered across Clint’s shoulders and down his arms. He didn’t want to be touched, he didn’t want to hear what the doctor had to say. It hurt. It was scary. It was too much._

_“One day you’ll be all mine.”_

Clint shot out of the chair and crashed to the ground, his knees taking the brunt of his weight. He tried to breathe but he couldn’t, couldn’t take in a deep enough breath to clear his mind. Every attempt at breathing stung because of his ribs, even a shallow gasp of air burned. 

He couldn’t breathe. 

Clint reached back to feel his neck, the raised skin and the scars on his spine. No stitches, no blood when he pulled his hands away. The voice of the doctor faded away and Clint could start to hear his own desperate and wordless attempts to pull himself together. 

Phil had dropped to his knees in front of Clint, he didn’t reach out to touch him but Clint could hear him talking softly. He couldn’t pull apart the words but Phil kept talking and Clint slowly stopped gasping for air. Once his heartbeat stopped thumping in his ears he started to pick out Phil’s words. 

“It’s ok, Clint. You’re having a panic attack, but you’re safe. You’re at the base in Montana, I brought you here this morning and Tony is following us with your friends. Everyone is fine.” 

_Sorry._

Phil blinked, “What are you sorry for? It’s perfectly reasonable to have panic attacks, Clint. Especially after all you’ve been through.” 

Clint shook his head and then waved his head up by his right ear. 

_I couldn’t hear him. The network._

Clint made the motion again and shook his head. 

Phil looked up at Bruce for a second and then back down at Clint, “The network messed with his hearing, Bruce. He couldn’t hear you.” 

Phil and Bruce talked over Clint’s head as he looked at the ground and continued the work of getting himself back under control. Once he felt like he had it he looked up and pushed himself to his feet. 

“We can be done for now, it’s fine.” Bruce offered. 

Clint shook his head and sat back down in the chair as his answer, “Ok. Phil, how about this time you sit in front of Clint. Tell him about the time you drove your mom’s car into the retention pond outside your neighborhood.” 

Phil huffed, but let out a laugh quickly after and dragged a chair from the other side of the room to sit it in front of Clint.


	6. Chapter 6

Clint made it through the rest of the exam with Bruce without another panic attack. Phil droned on, story after story, prompted by Bruce and his own memory while Clint faded in and out of paying attention. 

He then promptly had two separate freak outs while “debriefing” with Director Fury. 

Thankfully Clint only had to tell him about what had happened between interrogating Phil and arriving here. Filling a few pages and answering questions in the margins. 

Director Fury made what sounded like a promise that he'd only ask Clint for more information if they really needed it, and only once the network was off. It would be Tony's job to scour through any of the databases he could hack into to find out what happened to Clint before that. Clint spent just a few seconds too long stuck on the idea that someone else would be looking through his life. That someone else would know all the things he’d tried to keep secret from Bucky. From Steve and Natasha. 

It took him an embarrassingly long time to come back to himself after that. 

There was still a slight tremor to his hands when Phil dropped Clint back off in the office with Bruce with half a sandwich, a bag of chips and a water bottle. 

“I've got an absurd amount of paperwork to fill out after all this. I'll come back tonight, or earlier if Tony calls me with an update, ok?” 

Clint nodded and dropped into a chair tucked up under the only window in the room. 

Once he'd finished the food he set his forehead against the window and let himself float. The mountains looked almost familiar, similar in their sharp points but greener than Clint’s old desert peaks. Clint sorted through the views he had from New York, from the drive to the safe house, matched up his blurry memories of everything else before this. 

It was still chilly, even back in New York. Late spring and the tips of the mountains here still had snow on them. They would be nearly clear back home about now. He wondered how long it would be before they let him see what was left of it.

“Hey, you ok?” Clint pulled away from the window and gave Bruce a questioning glance. 

He was on the other side of the room, a large book open at his left side and his computer on the right, a pair of glasses that were now pushed back into his hair. 

“It's just… I can feel you thinking from all the way over here. You're nervous?”

Clint blinked in response. Then, mouthed _empath?_ as clear as he could and Bruce shrugged, then nodded. 

Like that nurse. Like that kid in Clint’s class at school. 

Clint stood up and walked over to Bruce's desk, there were a stack of sticky notes at the corner and Bruce handed over the pen he'd been taping against the keyboard. Clint scribbled across the note and then pulled it off the stack, sticking it to the desk facing towards Bruce. 

Worried about going home.

Bruce sighed to himself once he'd read the sticky note, “We’ll get you there. Or, somewhere else. Wherever you want to go once we get that network off.” 

It looked like Bruce was planning on saying more but the ringtone of his phone jangled loudly from his pocket. He gave Clint a frown and dug the device out of his pocket. Once he read the caller ID he sighed and slid his finger across the screen to accept the call, “Tony. You should be calling Fury.” 

Clint perked up and tracked Bruce as he stood up to pace across the room while he talked. 

“No… No, I won't because that's not my job, Tony.” Bruce scoffed and Clint could just barely hear the tinny voice coming out of the speaker while Bruce rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm. 

“Yes. Yeah, they got here this morning… Are you sure? Ok. Alright! Geez, Tony.” 

Bruce dropped the phone to his side and looked over at Clint, “Your friend, Bucky? He wants to talk to you.” 

Clint furrowed his brow and pointed at his throat to remind Bruce that he couldn't do it. Bruce nodded, “I know. I'll put it on speaker phone and you write, we’ll see how far that gets us.” 

Bruce pressed the speakerphone button on his screen and drew a chair up to Clint so he could sit down. There was shuffling on the other side of the phone line and Clint could hear grinding rock music in the background before it was abruptly cut off. Clint ducked across the room quickly to grab his notebook and dashed back.

“Clint? You there?” 

Clint sucked in a breath. 

He hadn't realized how used to hearing Bucky’s voice he was until it had been taken away from him. Clint nodded and looked up at Bruce. 

“It’s Bucky, right? My name is Bruce.” 

“Is Clint ok? He… after. I… Is he ok?” 

Bruce looked down at the phone and then at Clint, “He’s ok, a little banged up but I imagine you knew that already.” 

“Clint. We’re, uh. I don't exactly know where we are. Tony says you’re in Montana and that’s where we’re going, ok? Me, Steve and Natasha. We’re coming.” 

Clint flipped open the notebook and scratched out something on a sheet he’d been writing on with Phil and Fury, he pointed a finger sharply at what he wrote and looked between the writing and Bruce. 

“He wants to know about Sam and… Becca?” Clint nodded, “Becca.” 

“It… It got pretty messy after you left. Everyone is fine, but Sam had to stay behind. He’s gonna keep an eye on Becca. Once we get to you we can work on the papers to get Becca out.” 

They sat in silence. Clint and Bruce across from each other and Bucky on the other end of the line, thousands of miles away, listening to each other breathe. Clint had always wanted Bucky to be in the west, of course he did, but never like this. At least Clint could maybe go home. Not anytime soon, but one day. Bucky would never be back in New York. _Fuck_ , Bucky was _enhanced_ and he was never going home. 

“Clint?” Bucky’s voice crackled over the line, “Can you… can you take the phone off speaker?” 

Clint looked up at Bruce and pulled the phone towards himself once he nodded. Clint held the phone up to his left ear and let out a puff of air. 

Bucky nearly laughed, “Hey.” 

Clint rubbed his face with his free hand and ducked his head, turning towards the window and away from Bruce.

“You remember that one summer grandma and I stayed late a couple weeks? Your parents made you go back to school even though you begged to stay home with me,” Bucky was quiet, almost whispering. Clint could imagine that he was sitting in the back of the same type of nondescript black van he and Phil had taken to the safe house. Trying to keep the others from listening in. 

Clint nodded to himself, he figured Bucky would keep talking. 

“I thought- I thought for sure grandma would cave and let us stay. Send for Becca somehow and let us just stay with you.”

Bucky was quiet for a bit, then he whispered, “Guess I got my wish in the end, huh?” 

Clint wrote quickly in his notebook and fluttered his hand to get Bruce’s attention. He held the page up and pointed to the circled words he’d written. Clint held the phone out to Bruce and Bruce ducked his head to be able to speak into the receiver, “He said ‘it’s not over yet’” Clint snatched the phone back and waited. 

“Yeah I guess you’re right,” Bucky scoffed, a laugh finally sneaking out. 

Clint smiled at his lap and waited for Bucky to talk again. 

“Natasha decked Pierce, got him right in the face.” He started abruptly and Clint could hear someone grumble in the background. Clint huffed and Bucky started laughing again, “It was awesome! Steve thought it was hot-”

“Bucky!” 

“What? It’s true! You said so once we left!”

Clint tucked one of his feet under himself and leaned back in the seat while he listened to Bucky and Steve argue over the phone.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky stretched out unconsciously before he even realized he'd entered back into the land of the living. His feet hit the end of the footwell as he slid down in his seat. The SUV rumbled down the highway and Bucky was almost lulled back to sleep by the vibrations of the road. 

Instead he turned his head and opened his eyes just enough to see who was driving. 

Natasha, Steve and Tony had been taking turns driving. They took back roads and busy city streets during the day and empty, long stretches of highway at night. 

They'd crossed the border a while ago, with Tony in the driver’s seat. He'd smiled at the guard and ran his mouth like a motor while the stern looking women checked over the papers he'd forged for everyone. She accepted the documents and Tony drove through, still talking, until they crossed the Mississippi and had to wait for the guards on the western border.

“Hey, Stark. More strays?” The guard had peered into the car through the driver’s side window and looked at Bucky and the others hard before looking back to Tony.

“What can I say? I'm a bleeding heart, you know me. Fury or Coulson should've called ahead.” 

After that Natasha had driven for a while and Bucky kept a stronghold on the front passenger seat so he could watch the view. 

Steve was driving now, the road ahead of him straight, long and almost distressingly flat. The sun was rising up behind them but ahead it was still just dark enough that the headlights were doing most of the sight work.

Bucky yawned and Steve looked over briefly before turning his eyes back to the road, “Stark’s GPS says we’re in the middle of Nebraska,” Bucky nodded and Steve scoffed, “Not like I'd know the difference, we've been in corn and wheat fields for what feels like my entire life.” 

Bucky let out a short laugh and pushed himself back up in the seat, “You haven't been out west before, right?” 

Steve joked, “I liked New York too much to leave it, y’know?” 

“Yeah, sorry about that.” 

Steve made a dismissive noise and waved his hand in the air, “Don't worry, I blame Pierce anyway.” 

Bucky yawned again, his mouth stretching so wide that his eyes started watering, Steve soon followed suit with his own yawn. He slowly pulled the car off to the shoulder of the road and put it in park. Bucky blinked at Steve as he got out of the car, “I gotta stretch, wake Stark up and see if he’ll drive for a bit once I'm done.” 

Bucky hadn't ridden in many cars since the whole being down an arm thing, but he'd realized that it was all about balance. He turned around in his seat, his shoulder up against the backrest and reached out to tap the man on his knee.

“Mr. Stark, Steve wants you to drive.” 

The man grumbled and shifted before squinting at Bucky. Natasha was in the far back row of the SUV, still determinedly asleep against the car window, despite all the talking. “If you call me Mr. Stark again I'll take you back to New York,” he muttered, undoing his seatbelt and tumbling out of the passenger door. 

Bucky followed and looked around for Steve once he'd gotten out of the car. He was a few car lengths down the road, looking towards the east with his eyes shaded with his hands against the sun. Tony jumped up and down in place a few times and looked over at Bucky, “Cell service should be better once we hit the next state, you can call the base and let them know how close we are.” 

“We're not close to anything,” Bucky responded, looking out at the vast horizon. 

Tony looked out in the direction Bucky did and then looked back at the car. Bucky could almost see his eyes going out of focus as he thought.

Bucky remembered Clint doing that when they were kids. Another kid would beg Clint mercilessly for him to read their mind, or their mom’s or their teacher. When Clint would finally give in he'd look into the middle distance, at least that's what his family had called it, and give the group a laundry list of what they were thinking without blinking. It was equal parts creepy and jealousy-inducing that he could do that.

“The GPS has been pinging off sporadic cell towers for a while, but Wyoming runs the cables underground, and they run it out to the rural areas too, which means better coverage for us. Based on our average speed and the highways we’ll take we should hit good reception in three hours and the base in Montana another six or seven after that.” 

“What the hell?” Bucky whispered incredulously.

Tony laughed, “Don't worry. With some work soon you'll be able to show off your own party tricks.” 

_Party tricks?_ Bucky wondered to himself.

Oh, right. 

Bucky looked down at his hand and felt the thrum of energy below his skin. 

“I was wondering… Is this normal? I mean… Getting my abilities so late?” 

Tony gave Bucky a glance mid-stretch and shrugged, “Everyone is different, each special in their own unique way. Blah blah blah. Maybe you've used them before and just didn't realize.” 

Bucky couldn't think about any time that he would've had a reason to use his powers, not really, anyway. He thought briefly to his grandma, who had to have known he was enhanced. She could see the future, couldn't she have seen that one day he'd be able to move stuff with his mind? She would've told him, wouldn't she? 

“I haven't been able to do anything since New York.” 

Tony nodded, “you used your abilities because you were in danger, right?” He gestured at the empty fields and the barren highway, “There's not exactly much going on out here.”

“You can still do your tech stuff,” Bucky shot back. 

“Look, kid,” Tony sighed, “It's way too early for this and It's also not my job to teach you how to be ‘Kenetic or whatever you are. All I can tell you is that growing up under the thumb of a government that doesn't think you should exist doesn't exactly make for a healthy learning environment.” 

Bucky scoffed and kicked his foot against the ground. He knew Tony was from the East, he'd said as much during the hours they'd spent on the road so far. Also, the left-over remnants of a neural network were kind of a dead give away. 

He wasn't about to admit that it was probably for the best that he didn't know he could use his mind to move things (and _people_ , he has _shoved_ those soldiers away without touching them) until now.

He could've ended up like Tony.

Bucky turned his head to give Tony a look after he thought that, he couldn't read minds too, could he?

Town continued his half-hearted stretches, yawning between each motion. Bucky sighed to himself. 

The energy was still flowing through his body, though. 

Now that he knew what it felt like, he couldn't get it to go away. The energy was with him constantly, all he had to do was figure out how to use it when he wasn't under severe pressure to save himself from some jackboot thugs.

Bucky tried to pretend that the shuffle of wheat stalks was his own doing and not the wind. 

“Stark, you ready to drive for a bit?” Steve asked, walking down the shoulder of the highway, stretching his arms out behind himself. 

“I was actually thinking of letting the kid drive for a bit.” 

Bucky choked on his own breath and raised his eyebrows, “What?” at the same time Tony laughed and Steve made an affronted squawk. 

“Kidding, kidding. Although, it couldn't hurt to give him some driving lessons once we get to Montana, huh? What'd’ya think, kid?” 

Steve sputtered to a response faster than Bucky could and lightly pushed him towards the backseat, “Montana? Sure. Middle-of-nowhere Nebraska when we just crossed the border last night? No way.” 

Bucky wormed his way into the car just in time to see Natasha smile with her eyes closed in fake sleep, as Tony and Steve continued to argue outside.


	8. Chapter 8

Clint was sitting at the top of the stairs to the main office at the base. His legs were bent and tucked up against his chest, his arms wrapped around his shins. If it was a touch warmer he'd be barefoot, but a slight northern breeze was coming in on the heels of the sunset and he was appreciative of the clothes Phil had given him the day they arrived. 

Sneakers that actually fit his feet and jeans that were the right length and a zip-up hoodie from the local university with a fleece lining. Clint had it zipped all the way up to the base of his throat and the hood was bunched up at his neck to keep the wind from sneaking in.

Clint had been waiting on the steps for about an hour, if the falling sun was anything to go by. He and Phil had been in Phil's office when Tony called and said they'd be at the base soon and promptly hung up. 

The process was almost familiar enough that Clint could drop into a memory. Multiple ones, actually. 

Every May, sitting outside the front door waiting for his dad to bring Bucky and his grandma home from the airport. His dad would always call once he'd found them outside baggage claim and say they'd be home soon. 

After that Clint could never keep himself inside, busying himself with dinner, or cleaning or just waiting in front of the tv like his mom and Barney could. When he was younger he would try, only to get kicked out of the kitchen after dropping too many things or being tripped over while trying to help. 

Instead he’d go outside and stand in the yard under the shade of the trees, or sit at the door looking down the road. Waiting. 

Turns out some things never change.

He tapped his fingers against his legs and stared out at the base.

“It's warmer inside, y'know.” Phil said from his spot leaning against the building on Clint's left side. 

Clint shrugged and pulled on the sleeve of his hoodie to bring it down over his fingers. Then he gestured back at the door with a tilt of his head. 

_You can go._

Phil laughed, “And miss Fury dress down The Tony Stark when they pull up? Never.”

Clint appreciated the joke but he was pretty sure he wasn’t allowed to be alone on the base. Fury had given him more than a few disapproving looks after reading Clint’s responses to a few of his questions. That, and Clint hadn’t been alone on the base unless he was asleep the entire time he’d been here. 

They'd given him a room to sleep in. Not in the barracks with the soldiers but an empty office in the building where Bruce worked. There was a desk and an air mattress against the wall and a window that overlooked the mess hall and the mountains beyond it.

The base was constantly busy. Soldiers and families and people in suits. Cars, vans and planes were in and out all day long and hardly anyone stopped to talk to them aside from a brief, “Hey, Coulson,” in the hallways or in line at the mess hall. 

Phil told him it was a transitional base, people from all across the northern states would be stationed here before going down to the border or partnering up with forces from other countries that had treaties with the West or, like Phil and Tony, going out East for missions. Their families would stay on base or rent houses closer to town and come onto the base for school or food or doctor’s visits. 

Every day so far Phil always showed up a little while after Clint woke up, no matter how early or late in the morning it was, and walked him to breakfast. After that, they’d go to the medical hall or walk along the outer edge of the base to get some fresh air. Then Phil would drop Clint off at Bruce’s office. 

Bruce would work and Clint would doodle in his notebook. Apparently Tony was the only person on base who had experience removing neural networks. Bruce was great at mapping them out but the intricate and precise handiwork it took to remove it would be left to the technopath. Occasionally Clint would drop his notebook in favor or staring at his own brain through Bruce’s computer screen while he tracked the lines of the network on the images. 

They’d sit like that until Phil came back and shuffled them to another meal. 

Phil cleared his throat. 

“You said you and Bucky knew each other before you got taken, right? That he was a family friend?” Phil asked, pushing off the wall and sitting down a few feet away from Clint, giving space in between them for people to walk in and out of the building. 

Clint nodded. 

“Stark couldn’t find much about him in our database. Travel logs, mostly. Having a connection to the West should help him with an asylum claim. That and the telekinesis.” 

Clint raised his eyebrows to ask about Steve and Natasha. Phil shrugged and leaned away to give a woman in uniform space to walk up the stairs and open the door before he spoke. 

“It’ll be a little more complex for them, but they housed you, took care of you. And with the baby on the way I don’t know many people who wouldn’t let them stay.” 

Clint focused his mind again and looked at Phil, _you’ve done it before?_

Phil shook his head, “No, not yet. All the kids we’ve brought back so far have been alone. We’ll make it work. Trust me.”

He was about to respond again when the crunch of gravel and dust caught his attention. The sound followed ahead of the car but Clint could soon see it turning the corner to pull onto the main road up to the building. 

Bucky was the first person out of the SUV, shooting out of the backseat before it even rolled to a stop. “Clint!” He called, running across the yard between the road and the main office.

Clint pushed himself off the steps and stumbled down into the dirt, righting himself just in time to take the body tackle and keep them both upright. 

“Clint, holy shit. Holy _shit!_ ” Bucky breathed harshly into Clint’s neck, his hand twisted in the fabric of the hoodie to try and get his balance back. Clint laughed silently and slapped his hand on Bucky’s back a few times. 

“I can’t tell if this is because the kid is happy to get out of the car or if we might be interrupting something,” someone spoke from the now parked car. Clint looked up to see Steve and Natasha shimmying out of the back row and Tony standing on the other side by the driver’s door. 

“This guy’s wild, Clint,” Bucky whispered, “He let _me_ drive and then spent the last two hours driving over ninety miles an hour. In that!” he gestured back at the SUV with wide eyes. 

Tony shrugged and started his walk over to the office with Steve and Natasha, “I thought you wanted to get here, we could always have had grandma over here drive,” he jabbed his thumb at Steve. 

Steve was just about to argue back, Clint could see it in his eyes and the stiff set of his jaw, when a voice called from the front steps. Clint looked back to see Phil doing his best to hide his smile and Director Fury in the doorway. 

“Stark! Inside. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super happy with this chapter but I'm trying to get the story to the bigger plot points and it feels like I'm just gonna have to drag us there soooo LOL here we are.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony Chapter? Anyone have that on their bingo card? Tony Chapter.

Tony huffed around the pen clenched in his teeth a half-second before his AI spoke into his earbuds. 

“Bruce Banner is in the hall, Sir.” 

“Tell him no, JARVIS.”

Tony knew Bruce could override the keypad.

He wasn't bitter about his current set up. He wasn't. It just didn't make any sense that the one special ops team that needed a technopath was stationed out of a base that had the slowest download and upload speed of any base in the country. 

That, and every door still operated on a physical lock like it was 1975.

Tony had torn out the wall panel next to the lock on his office, wired up a keypad and installed a camera in the hall within the first two hours that he arrived on the base last year. Then he pestered Fury for a full two days to get approval for enough monitors and hard drive space to actually do his job in finding their missing kids. He only slightly regretted putting JARVIS online due to how much harddrive space the AI took up but he couldn’t deny that it was nice to have a bit of warning when someone was headed his way.

Bruce could get into the office, sure, but no one could stand a chance against Tony's digital security, even though it was all military-grade shit. Tony was good at his job.

“I shall remind you that he was given an override code after you destroyed military property in a fit of rage last month.”

Right. 

Tony had been forced to give over the keypad password to the office to Bruce and Phil after he destroyed his first round of military-grade shit last month when they found a 12 year old psy from Southern California dead almost three thousand miles away from home. No family to even send her body back to because the eastern special ops soldiers that took her had killed them, of course. 

Tony groaned, “Fine.” 

He stretched his arms up and leaned back in his chair as he heard the snick of the lock disarming. Tony thought briefly about clearing his desktop screen but Bruce would know soon enough what he was doing in his lair in the dark at midnight. 

Screen number one, the far left monitor, displayed two police reports. The one regarding the murder of three-fourths of the Barton family and the one about their other missing one-fourth. Both woefully thin and lacking in any useful information besides the date and time it happened.

Screen number two, the center left monitor, empty. Waiting for Tony to fill it up with instructions and enough code to cross his eyes. 

Screen number three, center right monitor, the bane of Tony's existence. 

Half a day into arriving at the base, after a few hours of ignoring Fury’s yelling and a break for food, Tony finally found all the video footage from the training center they kept Clint at dating back an entire year. 

He'd already found three more kids that were on the missing list from the footage. Tony put those on screen number four, far right monitor. 

After that he'd searched out the footage from the base Phil had snuck onto as well as the tapes from the base in the city where he first met Clint. 

That's what he was watching now. Tony blinked to start the video clip he'd been watching over from the beginning. Brought his arms back down from his stretch and pulled his earbuds out.

“What’s this?” Bruce asked, squinting at the video playing on Tony’s screen.

Tony pulled the pen from his mouth and taped it on the edge of his desk, “That,” he snapped, “Is our Clint Barton of Los Alamos, New Mexico getting the shit kicked out of him by Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross who unfortunately didn’t die when we pulled Barton and his friends out of New York.” 

Bruce sighed and Tony let the video close out with another blink of his eyes, “Shouldn’t you be working on getting his network off instead?”

Tony flicked his hand up and watched a few tabs close out, pulling up another window with a new video file. Ross never showed up at the training center, not for Clint. After the first few months of footage, which Tony had dragged through all of yesterday, there's only a limited number of people that interacted with Clint. 

Mostly ‘cause the kid was a little shit. Tony could appreciate that.

“Scheduled the removal for tomorrow morning. Hope you don’t have anything planned,” Tony muttered, holding his hand out towards the screen and watching the video fast forward. 

“So instead of… Oh, I don’t know, getting rest before you dig in someone's brain? You’ve decided to spend the night tormenting yourself,” Bruce finished on a statement and crossed his arms across his chest, looking away from the screen. 

“I-I’m not…” Tony grumbled, cleared his throat, “I’m not tormenting myself. I'm working.”

Tony nodded towards the screen where the video had started playing, “Fury is freaked that one of our own kids was chosen by someone so high up in the Eastern ranks. All the kids so far were just fodder before him,” Tony flinched at his own words, “He thinks soon it’ll be about more than just skirmishes at the border.”

There was no audio on any of the security footage, thankfully. Tony could get the jist of most of it pretty quick without it. A nicely dressed bureaucrat with a wicked right hook looking down at Clint, handcuffed to a chair, would make a request and Clint, being Clint, wouldn't follow through. Cue the wicked right hook, and try again. 

This time there were two additional people standing in the room, crowding in on the kid. One with a permanent sneer on his face and the other constantly in the kid’s ear, too close for Tony to try and lip read. 

“Does Fury think Clint knows something?” 

Tony shook his head, “No, but he's worried that they might come back for him. That or make it known to the public that they know we’re running missions to get the kids back. Fuck us over.”

Bruce held his hands out, annoyed, “What does that have to do with watching the kid getting tortured?” 

“Trying to figure out what made them pick him. Like I said, all the kids have been fodder so far, why would they change it up now?” 

“Phil says the kid is a pretty strong telepath, didn't they use him to track down rebels? That's a new addition to their arsenal,” Bruce offered, tapping his fingers at the crook of his elbow. 

“But why would the Secretary of State care? Hell, why would the Undersecretary care? They shouldn't be concerning themselves with spies.” Tony gestured at the bureaucrat, Alexander Pierce, on the screen. 

Bruce nodded to himself and moved closer to the screen, “And the other two?” 

“No names yet,” Tony chewed on his pen again while he watched, “This guy on the right must be a guard, no clue about the guy on the left. Think he might be a hypnotist given how the other kids respond to him. I've seen him on a few other reels from the center.” 

“Do you have a cleaner look at his face? What if he’s one of ours?” 

Tony turned and raised his eyebrows at Bruce, “Excuse you?” 

Bruce huffed, annoyed, and stepped away from Tony to squint at the dark office instead of the computer screens. 

“They weren't using psys before they started taking kids from the West, right? If they've got a stream of kids to feed into the system why would they use one of their own?” 

Tony dropped his hand to freeze the video, “J, blow this image up and enhance.” Tony tapped the desk while he waited and pushed his chair away so Bruce could see, “He's too old, doc.” 

“You think?” Bruce pushed, glancing down at the stilled image of the psy next to Clint, “Didn’t the research team find some kids that went missing but unreported a couple years before this started?”

Tony nodded, “Yes, but their families are all still alive and said the kids had the tendency to run away. Hence the fact that they didn't report it.” 

“Maybe the East has been running these operations before we noticed, started with easy targets,” Bruce pointed at the older psy, “And moved on to harder ones?” He shifted his finger to Clint, still on the edge of the image.

“JARVIS? See if you can find any records about this other psy. Name, rank, anything relevant.” Tony paused to allow the AI to answer in the affirmative and then he turned in his chair to look at Bruce, “Still doesn't explain what Barton did to get the attention of the higher ups.”

Bruce sighed, “That's for next time. You need to at least fake a few hours of sleep before anyone lets you near the kid with medical equipment.” 

Tony groaned and turned off the monitors before letting Bruce mother hen him out of the office and down the empty hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hm... suspicious...


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a shorty but its a goodie, I think anyway.

“Hey. Nat told me you’d be out here,” Bucky said, hopping down the steps to sit on the last one next to Clint. 

The sun was just coming up over the base and Clint had been staring into the horizon since he woke up in the dark a few hours ago and couldn’t get back to sleep. Bucky pushed his shoulder into Clint’s when Clint didn’t look up. 

“Couldn't sleep?” Bucky asked. Clint shrugged.

Bucky cleared his throat and kicked his legs out in front of himself. Clint had been watching the base wake up slowly with the sun, more and more people were starting to come out. Headed to the mess hall for coffee or breakfast, lacing up their shoes for a run, walking their kids out to the gate to go to school. 

They were all going to have normal days and Clint was going to spend his with someone digging in his brain. 

To be fair, Clint trusted Tony Stark. Mostly.

All of the adults (including Natasha and Steve) rolled their eyes anytime Tony so much as took a louder than usual breath, which was often, but Clint could see through his hyperactive-asshole cover.

Clint could also see the remnants of Tony's neural network. A network of white scars on his neck into his hairline, faded black spiderwebs in his hair when the light hit it right, like Maria. Phil has told him that Tony grew up in New York City and that he was a technopath, that he was one of the few people in the West that could remove networks without causing irreparable harm. 

Anytime Natasha had to shoo Clint away from her or Steve’s temper got the best of him or Bucky looked a little too wistfully at the mountain range outside of the base, Clint snuck into Tony's office. The keypad was a nice touch but Bruce didn't try nearly hard enough to block his code from prying eyes when he went in. 

The first time Clint came in and sat down in the corner of the room Tony hardly even looked up. Just called out, “If you're here to sell state secrets, good luck. They don't trust me with anything.” 

Between the second and third time Tony had put a comfortable, high-backed chair in Clint's spot and continued working away to the sounds of classic rock blasting through his headphones when Clint tip-toed in.

All that to say, Clint didn't mind Tony and he trusted him well enough to get the damned network out. 

It was up to Clint's subconscious now, whether he'd spend the whole time disassociating or flashing back to the training center or not.

His subconscious had already decided to give him three different nightmares playing a variation on the same theme. That all this was made up and Clint was still in the training center, his mind finally broken up from the torture and abuse that he couldn’t break out from behind his own walls. The dust kicking up from the road and the wind blowing off the peaks were just strong enough to remind Clint that this was all real. 

And Bucky. 

Phil had helped them all get set up in an empty two bedroom apartment on the base. The second bedroom wasn’t really necessary considering how used they all were to being in each other’s space anyway. Bucky and Clint lasted half an hour in their separate room the first night before they looked at each other silently and snuck into Natasha and Steve’s room to sleep on the floor. 

“Natasha was up when you left, said the baby was kicking her in the spleen every five seconds all night anyway. She said I should leave you alone for a while but…” Bucky trailed off. 

Clint nodded and dropped his head onto Bucky’s shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut. 

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Clint drifting aimlessly across the memories that he always pulled from after nightmares and Bucky breathing in the early morning air while they waited for Tony. 

He’d said it would only take an hour or two. Taking apart the network, despite how sensitive the placement of the wires and neurons were, was much easier than establishing one once you knew where to look. When Clint asked about how exhausted he’d always been Tony had shrugged his shoulders and said, “We gave you a half-decent bed in that apartment for a reason, right?” and barked out a laugh. 

Clint was about to fall asleep when Bucky sat up just enough to jostle his head off his shoulder. 

Tony was standing in front of them, a pair of sunglasses uselessly shading his eyes from the early morning light, “Barnes and Barton, just the two loitering teenagers I was looking for. You ready?” 

Clint nodded while he rubbed his eyes and let Bucky pull him off the steps they were sitting on. Clint kept his eyes on Tony’s shoes and Bucky asked, “What about Natasha and Steve?” 

“Phil will bring them over later,” Tony waved his hand in the air as a response. 

Thankfully they were doing this at Tony’s office instead of in the medical building. Clint had only been a few times since for basic things, things that weren’t terrifying or traumatizing but he couldn’t begin to think how badly this could go if they’d done this anywhere but Tony’s office. 

Bruce was already inside waiting for them when they arrived, checking his own tablet standing next to the small table they had set up next to a chair they’d put in the middle of the room. When he noticed them coming in he looked up and smiled at Clint, pushing his glasses up a bit on his nose before going back to what he’d been looking at. 

Clint stumbled briefly before stepping fully into the room. 

Nothing of the current set-up was anything at all like the training center. The room, for all of Tony’s late nights and obsessive behavior, was bright and open enough. Bruce and Tony talked easily between each other while Clint debated turning tail and running out. There weren’t any ropes or handcuffs or _muzzles_.

It was fine. Totally fine. Clint dropped himself into the chair and pretended to not look at anyone.

“Uh,” Bucky muttered, “I’ll go. You guys don’t need me, I guess.” 

“Hey, Hand Solo. Why don’t you stay?” Tony called out after Bucky as he turned to leave. 

Clint sucked in a breath and closed one hand around the other to try and stop them from shaking.

“Really?” Bucky asked slowly, looking between Clint, Tony, Bruce and the medical instruments on the table. He looked back to Tony and shuffled in place. 

“Sure. He’s gotta stay awake for this and having someone he knows within view will keep him from freaking out… Should, anyway.”

Bucky shrugged, “You want me to stay?” 

Clint nodded immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My boys! <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I spent over a week staring at maybe... three sentences? in my doc for this chapter. Then I decided to go a complete different way and wrote over 1300 words in one night. *Jazz hands* taadaa!

“Y’know, I could build you a new arm,” The music blasting through the small office cut off and Tony looked up briefly to catch eyes with Bucky from behind his computer monitor. 

Bucky and Clint scoffed at the same time and turned back to their video game. 

Well, it was Tony’s video game, but he had introduced them to it the day before and hadn’t asked for them to turn it off yet. It was bloody and violent and probably not the best thing for two teenage boys to be playing at ten o’clock in the morning, much less any other time, but no one was exactly stopping them. 

“What, you don’t trust me? I pull an entire neural network out of your friend’s brain stem but you don’t trust me to put an arm on you?” 

“Have you ever even built an arm?” Clint muttered, pressing one of the buttons furiously to try and shoot down Bucky’s character. Bucky howled when his character died, not quick enough with his one hand. 

Tony gestured over the monitor, “See! If I made you an arm you could finally beat Clint,” Bucky scoffed again and glared at Clint first, then at Tony. Tony continued, “Robotics are all the same, once you’ve built one you’ve built them all. At least when you’re me.” 

_No way_ , Bucky’s voice carried into Clint’s mind. Clint shrugged and pressed one of the arrow keys to skip through the cut scene and get back to the fighting.

Tony stopped talking, his 80s metal music gradually turning back up through the tiny speakers he had pointed towards him on either side of his computer set up. He’d spared one of the monitors for their video game and even though they were on the other side of the room his music still drowned out the 8-bit music playing in the background of their game. Tony’s thoughts went from hard to decipher to impossible to decipher, scientific notions and equations and code mixed in with the lyrics of songs Clint had only heard while riding around in his dad’s car as a kid. 

Clint was still getting used to the constant input of other people’s thoughts. After over a year of someone else deciding when he got to hear what was going on, it was rough getting used to having that control back. 

Phil had presented him with an anchor after Tony and Bruce removed the network. A small woven bracelet made by Phil’s mom when he was younger. It wasn’t as good as Clint’s old one but the more Clint got used to the soft fabric the more Clint could depend on it. 

Clint wondered if Phil’s mom was thinking about someone as loud as Tony when she made it. 

Three more rounds and Clint had beaten Bucky twice and Bucky had slammed on enough buttons and keys that he successfully killed Clint once. The music and Tony’s sporadic thoughts started to fade into the background and Clint focused enough to win back his lead. 

Bucky tossed his hand up in defeat and groaned, “Maybe an arm built by a psychopath wouldn’t be that bad?”

Clint snickered and went to restart the game. 

Sometimes, when Clint was younger, some people’s thoughts would be so loud and intrusive he wouldn’t be able to do anything but follow the thread wherever it would lead. Barney was like that when he had a fleeting summer crush on a girl in town. One of Clint’s classmates would worry so much during a test that Clint almost failed his math class in 4th grade until the teacher figured out what was going on and moved the kid to another room during tests. 

Clint had mostly blocked out Tony’s thoughts but suddenly he was so loud Clint couldn’t even focus on holding his controller. It slipped out of Clint’s hand and clattered to the floor. 

“Hey, Clint?” Bucky asked. 

Clint subconsciously reached to rub at the back of his neck, only stopping when his fingers brushed over the still sensitive bundle of stitches at the base between that and his spine. 

Bucky reached out and squeezed Clint’s shoulder, about to speak but Clint had already heard it. 

_Are you ok?_

Clint closed his eyes and tried to breathe through Tony’s thoughts. The man Tony was thinking of was talking--moving his mouth, anyway, but nothing was coming out. Like Tony either couldn’t remember, or didn’t know, what he sounded like. He was tall and shrouded in the dark of a dimly lit room, black stringy hair and a wicked smile. 

“How do you know him?” Clint asked just loud enough to be heard over the howling of the current song, squinting his eyes at Tony from across the room. 

The music cut off. 

“Know who?” Tony raised his eyebrows.

Clint conjured up enough of a replication of the image Clint had seen float over from Tony’s thoughts and pushed it to Tony, “Loki.” 

Tony looked away, his eyes and thoughts going blank except for the stutter Clint could feel of Tony searching his rolodex of thoughts, “So that’s his name,” Tony mumbled. 

Clint crossed his arms across his chest, “How?” he asked again. 

Tony blinked, then nodded and then blinked again, “When Phil and I were trying to track you down we were able to get into the CCTV footage of the training center you were taken to. We’ve been trying to nail down who this guy is for a while now.” 

There wasn’t a question but Tony was clearly done talking, either that or giving Clint space to talk. Clint knew they had been filming him, it wasn’t hard to notice. Even from the first time he was aware enough to realize what was happening, the cameras in each corner of every room were bulky, old school and always on. 

Clint shrugged, his arms still crossed, “He’s an illusionist, he liked to hypnotize people,” he huffed, “He’s an asshole.” 

“Aren’t we all?” Tony joked. 

“Why do you want to find him?”

Tony shrugged, like his mind wasn’t racing a thousand miles a minute and like Clint couldn’t hear and see it all, “Fury and some of the higher-ups think there were some test cases a few years before you and all those other kids got taken. Bruce and I were looking at the footage the other day and he looks like he might fit the age range for those cases.” 

“You think Loki is from the West?” 

“Maybe, were you ever able to read him?”

“No,” Clint sighed, “Trying to get into his thoughts only made it easier for him to… to control me. At least before the network. When they put the network in, well…” Clint shrugged and Tony nodded. He knew. 

“Did you ever see him outside the training center?” 

Clint shook his head, “He didn’t have a network, it’s not like they would’ve let him out without one.”

He stood up and crossed the room, Bucky protesting just a bit before he sighed and followed behind him. The middle of Tony’s three screens was covered in stilled video footage from the training center and two were frozen on Loki’s blurry face. Clint turned his face to look away. 

“What are you going to do if he is from the West?” 

Tony tilted his head back and forth and shrugged a little bit, “Above my pay grade, you’d have to ask Fury.” 

Bucky scoffed. He’d been introduced to Fury the day they arrived, same as Clint, and had decided he was too much for him. Clint had laughed behind his hand the entire time. 

“Whether or not he’s from the West, it always helps to know what we’re dealing with. Even someone as off-the-wall as him should have someone looking out for him.” 

Clint tried not to pry, he really did.

But Tony made it easy and Clint followed the storyline. Clint knew now Tony was from New York, that he’d been fitted with a network too, younger than Clint had been. Tony did shitty stuff just like Clint and Tony was an asshole and everyone deserves a second chance, _sure_ , but not _Loki_. Loki didn’t even have a network to blame his actions on, he was a garbage person because he could be. For fun. 

“Well, I’m not helping you find him.” Clint stated, turning on his heel and leaving the room.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the deal lol. I'm ~*HELLA*~ aro/ace. All I know how to do is write traumatized boys being snarky with a side order of cuddling. My boys (◕︿◕✿)

_Clint was choking. He was choking on his own blood and he was going to die in here, in this basement jail with these assholes._

_The network was a vice around his throat, sometimes it felt like he couldn’t even breathe with how constricting it was. The same burn that sparked through his mind now burned him down his neck and over his jaw. It set his teeth on edge._

_He tried to scream again, felt the effort in his chest and the inside of his throat tearing up and the handcuffs digging into the bones of his wrist. Pierce watched from the other side of the room and Loki watched from the corner nearest to Clint. Smiling._

_Clint spit out a glob of blood towards Loki and returned a mocking smile back, trying to close as much distance as he could between him and the hypnotist before the chain pulled him back._

_“You’ll kill yourself if you keep that up, boy.”_

_Clint would normally come up with something witty and sharp to say back, to get under Loki’s skin or to provoke Pierce into punching him but the blood wouldn’t stop now that he was screaming again. It poured out of his mouth like a waterfall and began to fill up the room, covering Loki and Pierce in the crimson red._

_Clint kept screaming._

“Hey… Hey, it’s just a dream! It’s-”

Clint shot up in the bed and swung his arms free of the handcuffs, only stopping when he realized that his fists were making an impact with something. Someone.

Bucky.

Clint opened his eyes and squinted in the darkness. Bucky was panting almost as hard as Clint was, hard enough that Clint could hear it despite his shitting hearing. He was standing in the middle of the room, still trying to catch his footing and regain his balance from jumping away from Clint’s flailing arms. Once Clint’s eyes adjusted to the lack of lighting he noticed that Bucky was holding his palm up against his jaw. He didn’t look upset but Clint could imagine the bruises that were probably already blooming on Bucky’s face.

Clint rubbed his eyes roughly with the heels of his hands, hard enough that he started seeing static after a few seconds. He tried to slow his breathing down, “Sorry…” he croaked out.

Bucky sighed and stepped forward wearily. Clint untangled himself from his blankets and swung his legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. “You done trying to be a prize fighter?” Bucky asked, using his hand to balance himself to sit down on the bed next to Clint. Clint huffed and nodded down at his lap, 

“This is bullshit, I didn’t have nightmares in New York,” Clint grumbled angrily, “Or at the training center.” 

“Was it Loki again?” Bucky asked.

Clint shrugged. Bucky knew Clint wasn’t going to tell him. 

The two of them lapsed into silence. 

Some nights it was fine. Clint was never much of a dreamer anyway, even when he was little. When he did they weren’t scary, just weird. He remembered the dreams he’d had before the Eastern soldiers had kidnapped him. They hadn’t really scared him, they’d just been… unsettling. 

The dreams he’d been having lately were nightmares though, and they scared the shit out of him. Twisted and worse than the reality. And they’d gotten worse since Tony had told Clint they were trying to find Loki. 

_Find Loki my ass_ , Clint had thought, _Find him and then what?_

Who cared if Loki was from the West and had a family that missed him? Clint didn’t and Loki was a part of that. And now Clint’s sleeping mind was having a field day with it. 

If the dreams were just memories he could handle it. Had been able to handle it. The nightmares were different. He couldn’t control what his mind wanted to do when he slept, couldn’t walk himself out and into someone else’s dreams for respite like a dreamwalker could. The only way he came out of it was either by screaming himself awake or someone realizing what was happening and trying to wake him up. 

Cue Bucky and his rapidly bruising jaw and pride. 

He’d woken Clint up from nightmares three nights in a row now. They’d decided they would try to spend more time in their own room now, in their own beds. They weren’t little kids and Clint at least wanted to take advantage of what little freedom he had these days. Steve and Natasha wouldn’t have minded if Clint snuck in in the middle of the night to curl up in the corner but there was no need. They were safe. It was _fine_. 

When Clint had mentioned it all in passing, Phil said the nightmares were “a manifestation” of Clint’s “newfound freedom”. His subconscious didn’t know what to do without an immediate threat so it was creating one for him to worry about. Bruce offered him sleeping aides and Tony shrugged unhelpfully, “Everyone’s got demons, kid.” 

“Do you want to go to Natasha and Steve's room?” Bucky asked.

Clint reached out to twist his fingers into Bucky’s shirt and shook his head frantically, “No. Nat hasn’t been sleeping well, remember? The baby and everything. Besides,” Clint tried to make it sound like it was alright, “I usually just have the one. I’ll be fine.” 

Bucky didn’t look convinced but he moved to get up off the bed, aiming to move towards his own and go back to sleep. Clint still had his hand fisted into Bucky’s shirt and he couldn’t stop himself from pulling once, tightening his grip. 

“Can you…” Clint whispered, his words lost. He pulled on the hem of Bucky’s shirt again.

A third and final tug and Bucky sat back down on the bed with a quiet, “Yeah, ok.” 

Clint shifted himself over, closer against the wall and after a moment Bucky slid onto his side on top of the sheets. Bucky snuffled and laid his head next to Clint’s, “You remember when we used to share your bed at your parent’s house?” he snickered and looked up to catch Clint’s eyes, “You kicked me so hard in the shoulder once your toenails drew blood!” 

Clint did remember. There were only two bedrooms in the house, Clint and Barney already shared one of them and unless Bucky wanted to wake up with a sore back every night it was something they always adjusted to quickly. They started out sleeping opposite each other, toes to head, until Barney had scoffed at them and told them to sleep like normal people. 

Clint laughed back and ducked his head. They were facing each other, and Clint could feel the heat of Bucky’s body seep past the fabric of his sheets, “You probably deserved it,” Clint muttered. Bucky kicked his foot out in retaliation, digging his toes into Clint’s shins. 

Clint yipped and pulled away, “Asshole!” he fake-whispered. 

“Jerk,” Bucky bit back. Then he clumsily reached out with his hand to ruffle Clint’s hair, scratching his scalp for just a second before pushing Clint’s head away, “If you kick me this time you’re sleeping in the hallway.”

Clint pretended he didn’t notice Bucky trying to tuck his feet under his own as he attempted to go back to sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

“How'd you sleep last night?” 

Clint snapped his head back off the table, trying to pretend he hadn't just fallen asleep there. He barely caught Natasha’s snicker as she walked past him to put the kettle on the stove.

He’d only gotten a few more hours of sleep without a second nightmare. Bucky’s arm stayed tossed over his side and his warm toes burrowed into the extra fabric of Clint’s sheets. The only thing that convinced Clint that he wasn’t back in New Mexico in his parent’s house was that Steve was the person who woke them up. 

Steve said nothing when he knocked on the door to come in and wake them up, just reminded Bucky that they had an early day to get started on their immigration papers and walked out into the main living area.

Bucky and Steve had left for the main administrative office on the base right as the sun was peeking out over the mountain range, whispering to each other about what needed to get done without waking Natasha up, leaving Clint at the kitchen table with a half-finished mug of room temperature tea and an untouched bowl of cereal.

Clint stretched his arms forward, twisting his fingers together and squeezing his eyes shut, “Fine, actually,” He responded mid-stretch, “I only drowned in my own blood once.” 

“You know,” Natasha started, pouring water into the kettle before turning the knob on the stove, “I think I preferred it when you couldn’t talk, my gag reflex is really heightened these days.”

Clint scoffed and pushed his dishes towards the center of the table to give him space to cross his arms and lay his head down so he could watch Natasha as she worked, “You asked,” Clint said into his elbow, pulling together enough energy to push against the kitchen towel she threw at him from the stove so that it fluttered uselessly to the floor instead of landing on him. 

“Yeah, I preferred the old you. Definitely,” Clint could see her small smile as she turned her back. 

Natasha finished her tea and pulled down her own bowl for cereal from the cabinet while talking about the trip she and Steve wanted to take before the baby came. Once all their paperwork was in order they’d be allowed to leave the base as permanent citizens and Natasha had always wanted to see the Pacific ocean. Clint let her talking wash over him like he had in New York, let her voice settle into his exhausted thoughts. 

Of course someone would knock on the door right as she sat down. 

Clint lifted his head up off the table and waved his hand for her to stay seated, “I got it.” 

“My hero,” she sassed back. He gave a little bow on the way to the door and laughed when she almost spit out her food in response. 

It was Phil at the front door with a literal towering giant behind him. 

“Hey, Clint. How’s your morning going?” 

It only took a second before Clint opened up his mind to see what Phil was hiding behind his most-definitely fake smile. The other guy wasn’t a psy but he stood on the porch glancing between the two of them like he knew what Clint was doing. 

“It’s been fine. Who’s that?” Clint asked, searching easily through threads of ideas and conversations in Phil’s mind. He was letting Clint in but there wasn’t anything useful there. 

The other guy, though… 

“This is Thor Odinson. I’m sure you remember that Tony was looking into the other people at the training center. He's Loki's brother.” 

Clint huffed a sigh and shifted his weight, “I told Tony I wasn't helping.” 

“He was seventeen when he got taken, Clint. He was your age, you know how that feels. We just want to make sure he is who we think he is so we can bring him home too,” Phil tried. 

“Bring him home?” Clint let out a sharp laugh, “Guy seemed pretty comfortable at the training center, _Phil_.” 

Phil sighed, “You’re the only person here who’s seen him. He deserves help, too. No matter how much we don’t like what he’s done.”

_Clint squeezed his eyes shut and gathered all the anger and fear to the center of his mind before pushing it out in all directions. Aside from his private lessons over the years Clint didn’t use his energy manipulation skills very much, no reason for it unless he was just trying to show off. Since the soldiers knew what he could do, there was no point in trying to hide it._

_The man holding him let go in shock and Clint stumbled away to try and cross the room to reach Barney. Around the room the others reacted in pain or confusion at the sudden input and Clint lurched forward._

_The psy who had been next to him pulled Barney behind him and shook his head, “You’ll have to be much faster than that, little one.”_

_“Give me my brother.” Clint pulled together another round of energy, felt it crackle around him._

_“You think your brother will want to go with you after what you did to your parents?”_

_Clint paused, long enough for his energy to leave room for weakness and for the nicely dressed officer to catch him off guard and hold his arms tight behind him, locking a pair of handcuffs around his wrists._

_“What are you talking about?” Clint hissed._

Clint shook his head to try and clear the memories out. 

“Yeah? Well maybe someone should’ve _helped_ him before he helped those jackboot thugs _kill_ my family, or did you guys forget that’s what they do?” Clint crossed his arms and held his hands tight to his chest. Partially out of anger and also because he could feel the energy building up, thrumming through his body and down to his hands, ready to defend himself if need be. 

“Mr. Coulson, you should go,” Natasha was standing behind Clint, her fingers wrapped around his bicep, ready to pull him back into the house. 

Clint pulled away from her grip and turned his ire on the man behind Phil, “Did they even tell you what he did before they brought you up here? He tortured people, other enhanced people like him, and you want him back?” 

“Clint--” Natasha tried again before he fully pulled himself away from her. He wasn’t really sure what his goal was but when he found himself standing in front of Phil. He leered at Thor from over his shoulder and let let his anger and energy fuel each other, waiting for someone to answer him. 

“The footage from the training centers is awful, both in quality and in content,” Phil started, his voice calm and his mind peacefully blank when Clint tried to get in and find something to hurt him with, “You just need to show Thor what you saw so he can tell us if it's really him. That’s it. Two minutes, max.”

“Why not just get him and find out then?” 

Phil sighed, “You know why we can’t do that.” 

Clint thought about what Loki did, ran through his mental rolodex of terrible stuff he watched Loki do to other people, what Loki did to Clint. He knew how dangerous it was to go out East to rescue someone, obviously, and he could start to imagine how much more dangerous it would be if the person they were trying to rescue wasn’t in need of it. Clint didn't want to be responsible for more pain and suffering on other people.

Thor finally spoke, “I’m sorry for what Loki did to you, I really am. But he’s my family and I have to help bring him back, I owe him that much.” 

At that second Clint didn’t dive into Thor’s mind to try and figure out what he meant by that, he wasn’t that much of an asshole. Instead-- “Two minutes?” he asked.

“Two minutes,” Phil nodded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy *rubs hands together*


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday! Do you like podcasts? Do you like Marvel? You should listen to the podcast I'm on. We review each of the movies in chronological order (So we start with Captain America: The First Avenger and will finish with Far From Home or whichever will be the most recent one by the time we get there). We just released our CA:TFA episode this week, check it out! https://soundcloud.com/user-110481773

“Clint, you don’t have to do this.” 

He rubbed the frayed edge of the anchor Phil had given him, looking down at the ground and staying as far away as he could get from Natasha and the two men that were now waiting in the kitchen. Clint hadn’t been wearing the anchor when they showed up, didn’t really ever wear it in the apartment at all. He had gotten used to hearing Bucky, Steve and Natasha in the background hum of his mind. Instead, it was usually left on the nightstand by his bed.

“I should, Nat. It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Natasha tried again, “You don’t owe them anything, not like this. They know how much everything at the training center hurt you.” 

“I hurt people too, though. Just like Loki did and they still helped me... You still helped me,” Clint crossed the room and stood in front of Natasha. 

She scoffed, “I only helped you because Steve gave me those pitiful lost-soul eyes while we were arguing, you know I hate that.” 

“That guy, Thor? He’s busted up about this. I can feel it, it’s _overwhelming_ , Nat. It’s just two minutes and then I never have to see him again,” Clint didn’t really know that. Practically he knew that Phil, or Fury, or Tony would keep asking him for help, but none of them would ever look at him the way Thor had. 

The desperation Clint felt rolling off him was awful and maybe Clint was still raw and open after finally being able to feel and hear everything around him for the first time in over a year. Maybe he was being selfish. Either way, helping this guy would get the stink of desperation off him and out of the only place Clint felt safe. 

Clint watched as Natasha worked through her thoughts about letting him help. After a minute she moved out of the doorway and allowed Clint to walk down the hallway to where Thor and Phil were waiting in the kitchen. 

Clint waved his hand, showing off the anchor to Phil, as he sat down across from Thor at the kitchen table. 

Thor cut right to the chase.

“You saw my brother?”

Clint shrugged, “That's what they said.” 

“Show me,” Thor reached his hand out. 

Clint pulled back and pushed his chair just out of reach, “You aren’t a psy.”

“No, I’m not. But I’m used to- was used to him putting stuff in my head when he didn’t want anyone else to hear,” Thor looked pained as he talked, “Show me, please.”

Clint fiddled with the leather on his wrist and nodded, “I don't need to touch you.” 

Well, to be honest it would've helped but having this guy in his space, this guy whose brother was probably one of the people that tortured Clint… Clint could make it work without opening himself up to another round of panic attacks, thanks. 

Clint slid his chair back a few more inches and gave Thor a more thorough look than he had when they walked in the door and he had felt their intentions seeping in.

He was blond like Steve, but less clean cut. His hair pulled back in a short ponytail so he obviously wasn’t in the military given all the short hairstyles he’d seen on all the men at the base. Clint wondered for a minute how much searching they had to do to find this guy. Did they fly him out here just so Clint could tell him about how his brother had basically turned into a cartoon villain? 

Thor was tall too, head and shoulders, literally, above Clint and a few inches still on Steve. Even sitting down he was more imposing, bulky and muscular than even the worst of the retraining center’s guards. 

He didn’t look like a thing like Loki.

“You don't look like him,” Clint slipped into Thor’s mind easily enough, still toying with the edge of the anchor. 

Thor shrugged, “He’s adopted, it's complicated.” 

Clint rolled his eyes and pushed his thoughts forward.

While he’d been burning time in the bedroom looking for the anchor Clint had tried to think of what a good memory would be to share with someone who had positive feelings towards Loki. Most of Clint’s memories with him had been entirely negative.

Except for one. 

_Clint let his head fall back and rest against the wall behind him. As long as he could keep himself from swallowing too much this would keep his throat from hurting as much as it had._

_At least he wasn’t tasting blood on his tongue anymore._

_The cell was quiet, Clint had stopped screaming once he finally realized that he wasn’t going to be able to get the network off his throat without killing himself. For a while it almost felt like his hoarse and useless voice was still bouncing off the four walls but now it was blessedly silent._

_Of course it couldn’t last forever._

_Clint could hear the locks on the door disengaging, the bottom of the door scraped horrendously against the concrete floor to reveal someone standing on the other side._

_“It’s easier if you accept this is where you’re meant to be,” Loki called from the door once it opened._

_To avoid swallowing and tearing at his abused throat, Clint spit out a glob of red-tinged saliva to his left and shrugged his shoulders at Loki. Loki scoffed in return and walked in just enough to let the door swing shut after him._

_“If you behaved more often I might be able to help you, you know.”_

_Clint slid his eyes over and raised an eyebrow in question._

_“The better you behave, the more likely you are to get out of here. I know you think you should prove yourself, defend your honor, but wouldn’t it be more honorable to survive and get out of here? They’ll kill you if your training takes much longer.”_

_Loki was not to be trusted, obviously. Clint shook his head and lifted one of his hands. He then pointed at his own head and at Loki to try and convey that. He wasn’t an idiot and Loki was a hypnotist, this was just another round of that. Maybe they thought since he had given up on trying to break the network he would be more willing to go along with it._

_He wasn’t._

_“For once, I’m not trying to trick you.”_

_Clint huffed._

_“One day the west will realize they produce too many strong-willed children,” Loki muttered to himself, “Hopefully it won’t be too late for the rest of us.”_

Clint let the memory drop out and sat back in his chair. Thor took in a huge breath across from him and immediately grabbed his head with his hands. Phil took a stutter step forward and Clint held out his hand to stop him. 

“Was that him? He’s your brother?” He asked. 

Thor nodded, his hands threaded into his hair hard enough that much of it had come loose from the ponytail and knotted in between his fingers. 

“That’s him,” his voice broke and Phil nodded while pulling out his phone, “I thought he was gone, I thought he was dead and he was out there this whole time. Oh, god.” 

Clint cleared his throat, “I’m going to the administrative building. Steve and Bucky are over there.” 

He pulled away from the table, the chair screeched horrendously on the tile but he propelled forward in a search for his shoes by the front door. 

“Do you want one of us to walk you over?” 

Clint couldn’t tell who spoke, didn’t care. He shook his head, “No. I’ll be back later.” 

The door slammed behind him and he broke out into a run.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky Chapter? Bucky chapter. :)

“You're enhanced, correct?” The administrator turned to another page in her binder. She looked up at Bucky. He quickly turned away to pretend that he wasn’t just watching her take notes on what he’d said. 

She’d been taking notes on him for a few hours. Asking questions about how often he came over to New Mexico to see Clint and his family, about his parents and his grandma and his sister, about school and anything else she could possibly need to know about him growing up in New York. 

Phil and Tony had said that none of this was a big deal, it was all mostly a formality considering how he’d ended up in the East anyway. 

But this lady sure seemed to think it was a big deal.

Bucky nodded and ran his fingers along the side of the water bottle she’d given him a while ago but he hadn’t yet opened, “Yeah. Telekinetic, I guess.” 

She raised her eyebrows, “You guess?”

“It's kind of new?” Bucky tried, “I only just used my… powers a few weeks ago. Didn’t have it before.” 

Her eyebrows stayed stuck up high and she wrote down a few words before setting her pen down on the paper and clasping her hands on top of it. 

“Show me, please.”

“Uh,” Bucky shifted uncomfortably in his seat, where was a good distraction when he really needed it? 

He let the water bottle drop to his lap and the woman continued to stare him down, “...The only time I was able to get it to work was when a guy tried to shoot me in the head... so I’m not really sure if I can.” 

The administrator’s face softened, “Start small. My cousin is telepathy and they say it helps to relax and visualize that whatever you want to move is already moving.” She moved her hands off her pen and set it on the desk, gesturing for Bucky to start with that. 

“If I can’t get it to work you guys won’t kick me out, will you?” He glared at the pen and mumbled, “Pretty sure the guy who tried to shoot me wants to finish the job.” 

She didn’t answer and Bucky let his shoulders drop, eased the tension in his forehead. He put his eyes back on the pen and imagined the pen moving. Not because he moved it, but because Clint moved it. 

_“We could go on the road with this,” Barney grinned, shaking his hands in the visual mist of Clint’s energy so the ball that was floating in the air above them dropped to the ground, “Wouldn’t that be cool?”_

_Clint rolled off his bed and slid down on the ground to sit comfortably next to Bucky, “It’s my enhancement, if anyone is gonna take something on the road it’d be me. People’ll know it’s not you the second you get on stage,” he snickered._

_Barney scoffed and picked the ball up to aim it at Clint’s face. Despite the proximity, Clint dodged it. The ball hit the edge of the bed and fell between him and Bucky. Clint snatched it up before it rolled under the bed and held it tightly in his hands._

_“The girls in the senior class wouldn’t know it wasn’t me. C’mon, little bro!”_

_Barney was thinking about the girls in the senior class a little_ too _much, even Bucky could tell. Clint pretended to gag and then tossed the ball up in the air a few times. Bucky saw Clint’s energy building up, each time growing stronger to the point where the ball wasn’t touching Clint’s fingers when gravity brought it back down. Soon the ball was held suspended in the air, psychic energy flowing around it like gas._

_“Just gotta play it up enough that they just believe I’m a late bloomer or somethin’.”_

_Bucky spoke up, “The senior girls want to hang out with a late bloomer?”_

_Clint’s premature laugh almost ruined the delivery of the joke. He’d started laughing at ‘girls’ knowing exactly where the joke was going. Bucky didn’t mind, Clint was in his mind from the second they arrived in New Mexico every summer anyway. It was comfortable._

_Barney fumed and stomped out of the room._

_Despite the distraction, Clint still had the ball suspended in the air, “Ok. Your turn.”_

_He turned to Bucky and Bucky straightened up, holding out his hands. The ball slowly lowered and Bucky felt the tingle of energy passing his fingertips. Bucky closed his eyes and imagined, not for the first time, that he was enhanced like Clint. Like Clint’s mom. Like his grandma. When he opened them again Clint was smiling madly, watching the ball float between them._

Bucky felt his fingers twitch as he continued to stare at the pen. He tried to reach into his memory and feel the energy he felt that day. Energy manipulation and telepathy were different, he knew that, but they must feel at least a little bit the same. He tried to imagine all the times he pretended to be psychic as a kid, what it felt like to really believe that he had special powers.

The pen rolled across the table, shuddered in place, and then raised a few inches in the air. The administrator smiled and Bucky immediately lost focus. He sighed as the pen fell out of the air and clattered noisily to the ground. 

She leaned out of her seat to pick it up, “That was good, you’ll get better at it. We can get you registered for some classes, if you’d like.” 

Bucky shrugged and slid back in his chair. 

She flipped through a few pages in her binder and Bucky cleared his throat, “Do you guys know what happened to my grandma? Or… I mean, do you know how to find that out?” 

“Well, we have to assume she’s still alive until we know otherwise,” she paused at the page she was at and turned back a few, “It was two years ago, right? That she was taken?” 

Bucky nodded. 

“There are a few training centers around the area, now that we have her name and some more concrete information it might be easier to find her that way. We have a team that can do some research if you’d like. I can’t make any promises, of course, but we’ll do our best to find out what happened.” 

Bucky watched her again write a few things down, and waited for her to say anything else. Once she was done she closed the binder and dropped it on the desk where the pen had been moments before. 

“That’s all I have for today, I think Mr. Rogers is on the third floor. Do you want me to walk you up there?” 

“No, thanks,” Bucky shook his head and set the unopened water bottle on her desk, “I know the way.” 

He stood up and started to navigate his way through the other desks and chairs filled with people meeting with their own bureaucratic administrators. 

“Wait!” She called before he’d gotten too far away. Bucky stopped and turned back around, “Take this,” She offered up her pen and gestured for him to come back and get it, “For practice.” 

Bucky huffed out a laugh and looked at the pen held out in her open palm. The calm feeling of easy psychic energy washed over him and he willed the pen out of her hand. 

He tried to contain his smile as the pen floated shakily across the few feet and landed in his own waiting hand. 

“Thanks.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like the idea of Clint and Tony being little shits and then being friends _because_ they're both little shits. It's fun for me that way.
> 
> Also, do you like podcasts about the MCU? I'm a co-host of a MCU review podcast and we just released our episode about Captain Marvel, check it out! https://soundcloud.com/user-110481773/episode-two-just-a-girl

Clint held his breath as Tony stepped into the office. 

Tony definitely still heard him shuffling in the vent. 

_Shit._

On the ground Clint would've been able to hear the squeak of his office door in time to stop moving, but Clint’s ears were basically useless up in the ceiling, or a room away, or down the hall. Any sound that wasn't next to him was bound to get missed. 

Fucking Pierce and his network. Clint knew that even after the network was removed his hearing was still going to be shit. The doctors in the training center had said as much when they warned Pierce that networks didn't usually go as deep as his, that it could result in permanent damage. Bruce and Tony had said the same when they had removed it, that he was lucky he could still speak. Clint guessed hearing was just too much to ask for. 

Clint's eyes were still pretty sharp. He watched Tony look up and squint at the fluorescent lights, his non-audible groan still visible through the slats in the vent.

When he'd entered the code to Tony's office and found it empty he thought about wiggling into the comfortable chair in the corner, the one Tony had put in once he realized Clint was going to become a fixture in his office, but he needed more seclusion than that. 

He could still feel the icky slime of Thor’s anguish and the phantom pain Loki had caused him. He needed to be alone. 

The vent opening had been just big enough to provide him with just that, at least for a little while. 

Tony spoke and Clint could hear the sounds of it, the ebb and flow, but couldn't pick out the words. 

He huffed and removed the vent covering, stuck his legs out and lowered himself down to the floor as Tony watched with his eyebrows raised. Clint dusted himself off, “You'll have to say that again if it's important,” He muttered, waving his right hand up by his ear. 

Tony looked Clint over and then turned to his desk, “JARVIS, make sure I've got time to spend on those hearing aids today.” 

The response from the computer was too quiet for Clint to hear but then Tony spun around, stopping briefly to rub his hand over his forehead and sigh loud enough for all of Montana to hear. 

“Right,” Tony nodded, “I don’t want to tell you you can’t hide out here, but I’m still a little tipsy from last night. I can’t have you banging around in the vents. Besides, I got you that nice chair, why not sit there?” 

“It’s like… nine in the morning, on a Wednesday. Why are you tipsy?” Clint deflected.

Tony scoffed, “None of your business, it's actually all my business and not yours at all.” 

Clint blinked and let himself reach out to try and sort through Tony's disjointed thoughts. He made it past the fuzzy haze of empty bottles of alcohol in a dark room before Tony slammed up a wall and vocally yelped.

“Boundaries, Barton! Jesus Christ, kid, where are your manners?” 

That was rich, coming from Tony. 

“You know I'll find out,” Clint teased, “I've got nothing better to do out here.” 

Tony shot a glare across the room at Clint and slumped into his chair, letting it spin him in a circle before he caught himself on his desk. 

“Bruce does think I should talk about my feelings more,” he muttered to himself.

Tony twisted in the office chair back and forth a few more times before opening his mouth, “Phil must’ve come over today already, right?” 

Clint huffed and allowed himself to fall into the chair in his corner before nodding. Tony nodded in return, “We’ve got a team ready to go out next week and retrieve Loki, the set up for all of this is… to be honest? It sucks.” 

“The plan or getting Loki?” Clint rolled his eyes as Tony groaned at Clint. 

“Look, I know more than anyone here that to you, that guy deserves to rot in a basement and never see the light of day again,” Clint flinched at the too-exact description of his year in the training center but Tony continued on, “But Loki is ours, whether we like it or not, and he shouldn’t be out East with those sadistic fucks.” 

“So,” Clint drew out, “You’ve already decided what you’re gonna do. What’s with the…” Clint pushed just a bit on Tony’s thoughts, “Tequila, really? My brother used to say tequila tasted like burning glass.” 

Tony groaned, “Just preparing myself. Not that it’s any of your business, _like I said._ ” 

“Yea, right. It’s not my business even though Phil showed up with Loki’s brother at nine o’clock in the morning to have me show him my memories. Nope, not at all.” 

“I was against that, by the way. I want that on record,” Tony wagged his finger at Clint and slowly pushed himself out of his desk chair to dig around in the mini fridge he had set up to the side of it. When he finally pulled a fresh water bottle from it, he fell back into the chair with his eyes closed. 

“Is the team gonna bring him here?” 

“God, no!” Tony barked, “At least Fury knows better than that.” 

Clint squinted at Tony as he sipped from the water bottle, his eyes still closed. He tapped lightly on the wall Tony has put up as a barrier to his mind for Clint. It wasn't that strong, Clint could knock it down if he wanted to, actually see what Tony was upset about before Tony even noticed that Clint was digging around. 

“I can practically _feel_ you scheming from over there, stop it or I'll kick you out.” 

“Just don't get why you said you think Loki should be saved when it's pretty clear that's not what you want,” Clint shrugged and tucked himself deeper into the chair, pulling his legs up to his chest. 

“No, see, that's where you're wrong and I know you're wrong because my therapist says I'm very good at building walls-” 

“You have a therapist?” Clint interrupted.

Tony heaved a giant sigh, “Yes, everyone should. Including you, by the way. Has Phil talked to you about that?”

Clint ignored the bait and waited for Tony to continue. He was now glaring at Clint from behind his desk, the water bottle forgotten on the edge of it. 

“I've got access to all the footage from the past five years at the training center you were kept at. I mean, all of it, every second. Loki never once stepped foot off the property from the time he was brought there until the last time I checked my uploads fine which was,” Tony thought for a moment, “Eight hours and twenty-seven minutes ago.”

Then, it clicked, “Oh.” Clint let out. “That means you have to actually go to the training center to pick him up, right? Not like with me, where I was in the city.” 

Tony gave a loose nod. 

Clint grimaced, “When was the last time you were at a training center?” 

Tony scoffed and then tapped his fingers along the desk in silence for a minute, “I was never actually at a training center. Back then they were called schools and they didn’t have to kidnap anyone to get parents to drop their kids off there and never come back.” 

For all the Tony had said he didn’t want Clint digging through his mind, it was hard for Clint not to notice the memories that were now almost louder to Clint than what Tony was actually saying. Clint had known enough about Tony’s life before coming out West already, but the memories were so close to Clint’s own. 

“Can’t you say no? Doesn't the military have other technopaths?” Clint already knew the answer. For the same reason Clint said yes to helping Thor, Tony would stay on the mission even if there was another technopath that could do what he could. When it came to other psys, other enhanced, it almost felt like you couldn’t _not_ do what you could to help them. 

Even awful ones like Loki, Clint had to admit. 

“None that are as good as me, and yes you can quote me on that,” Tony answered. 

Clint laughed and let his head relax against the back of the chair, “Guess we both need a place to hide out for a little while?”

Tony sighed and rediscovered the water bottle he’d left on the desk and put it up against his forehead to try and leech some of the cool temperature to sooth his hangover headache, “Guess so.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going to... gently drop this chapter off like the delicate ceramic item that it is and *runs away*

“Think fast, Buck!”

Clint howled with laughter as Bucky just barely stopped the baseball from tagging him in the chest. Instead, the ball was suspended in the air a few inches away. Clint continued to snicker as Bucky pushed his hand out to send the ball flying back towards him. 

“You’re getting really good at that,” Clint commented as he held his hands out to grab the ball before it hit him, then he tossed it back toward Bucky as they kept moving across the lawn. 

“Only because if I don’t you’ll land me in the medical building with a concussion,” Bucky snapped back, sending the ball Clint’s way telekinetically. Clint started to deny the accusation but Bucky fixed him with a look, “You tried to throw a watermelon at me last week, Clint.” 

Clint jumped up to catch the ball and shrugged, “It was a little one, the lady in charge of the community garden said it wasn’t even ready to eat!” 

Bucky scoffed, “So in a few weeks when the watermelons are ripe you aren’t gonna throw one of those at me?” 

Clint thought for a second, tossing the baseball back and forth between his hands, “...Maybe?”

“You’re the worst!” Bucky cried, reacting just in time to Clint’s fastball to catch it in his one hand and tuck it into his side. 

“Yeah, you say that now, but what are you gonna do when it gets cold again and I don’t let you share my bed?” 

Currently the idea of sharing a bed with anyone, even if they were Bucky, sounded like asking for a sweaty death to Clint. 

It was hot. Hotter than he thought it could be this far north. Only the main buildings had air conditioning and all the portable fans they could find, barter for, or steal on (and off) the base were in Steve and Natasha’s room to keep her cool at night. It was late July now and normally she would’ve been fine but the baby was still a couple months out and she always went out of her way to remind them of that anytime one of the boys looked longingly at a fan for a bit too long.

When they’d arrived in May, Clint was still bundled up in a sweater most days and now he could barely tolerate the thin t-shirt he’d put on this morning. 

The heat was better than being in New York with Pierce, obviously. But still. 

As the summer had dragged on there were times where it almost felt like the past year and a half hadn’t even happened, like it was just some terrible fever dream. Clint could go long stretches of time helping Natasha with their apartment garden, following Steve as he looked for off-base jobs and teasing Bucky to test how his telekinetic abilities were getting on before something could scratch the surface of his memories. 

Usually it was seeing Phil, Tony and their team dragging themselves onto the base after missions, success undetermined most of the time. 

Clint tried not to think about the night before Tony and Phil were supposed to leave Montana for the East again for Loki. He, Bucky and a few other kids on the base had been watching them prep the jet, the same jet they’d flown Clint in, to land in Canada and then drive across the border to complete the mission. 

Instead, they were recalled to help in the recovery of a new round of missing kids. 

As far as Clint knew, the kidnappings of enhanced kids from the West had stopped about six months after he’d been taken. Pierce never talked about it and neither had Ross in the short time Clint had known him. No one besides the other prisoners had talked about the enhanced western kids cycling through the training centers. However, people talked a lot here, and Clint had pulled together a rough timeline. 

The week before ten kids had gone missing and instead of their families being murdered, as was the M.O. of the Eastern kidnapping teams before, they were left dazed, confused and practically unscathed. 

By the time the military decided to call up Phil and Tony to help, another fifteen were gone. 

Clint and Bucky tried to be on standby to entertain the kids as they came in or distract a younger sibling or two so the parents could pull themselves together. A few weeks into watching frazzled families and scared kids pass through the base, Clint decided to push Loki and the idea that he should be rescued out of his mind like everyone seemed to have and moved on. The kids were so scared, and their stories were so similar to Clint’s he couldn’t help but get wrapped up in trying to help them like Steve, Natasha and Bucky had done with him.

By the end of July they had found twelve of the kids and four more that had gone missing around the same time as Clint.

“Heads up!” Bucky shouted, just in time for Clint to get hit right in the stomach with the baseball Bucky had flung back at him from across the field. Clint grunted and dropped to pick the baseball up off the ground. “You’re thinking too hard about whatever it is, Clint.” 

“You think Tony and Phil’ll come back today?” Clint asked, throwing a soft underhand to Bucky. 

Bucky shrugged, “They’ve barely been gone a week.” 

Clint nodded and skipped over a hole in the field and turned around to catch the baseball, “Bruce got a call yesterday night.” 

“You were at home with us last night.” 

“Telepathic,” Clint touched the ball to his head and then tossed it high, over Bucky’s head, and sent it rolling across the grass into the road, “Or did you forget?” 

Bucky groaned heavily and jogged towards the road to snatch up their only entertainment before it got crushed under the wheels of any of the SUVs or trucks rumbling around the base. Clint kicked at the grass while he waited.

“Clint!” 

Clint’s head shot up from looking down at the ground to follow the distant sound of Bucky's voice. He was standing in the road next to the forgotten baseball and a dusty black pick-up truck that had been parked in the middle of the road. Bucky was still talking, trying to call out over the sounds of the base as if Clint would be able to pick any of it up. 

Clint closed his fingers around the anchor and pushed to hear Bucky’s thoughts instead.

_Tony and Phil are back!_

Clint leapt out of Bucky’s mind and searched the truck for Tony's chaotic thoughts or Phil’s quick and decisive ones. He looked too for the sounds of a new kid, always frantic and exhausted and hungry, 

But Bucky was wrong. Phil was back, Clint could feel him pushing back on his intrusive search for information, but there was no Tony and no new kid in the backseat.

“Phil?” Clint asked aloud, jogging across the field towards the road, “It's just you? Where’s Tony? Did you find another kid?” 

By now Phil had stepped out of the truck from the driver’s side and was holding his hands up to tell Bucky and Clint to stop asking questions. 

“It's just me. I have to go debrief with Fury and then I'll tell you, I promise.” 

Clint searched Phil’s mind, pushed back and looked for other paths when Phil shut him down while Bucky asked, “Just you?” 

Phil looked over at Clint and pushed him out of his mind one last time before shuffling towards the admin building behind them, “Just me.” He said.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Clint held his hand out to stop Bucky and they both tried to smile innocently at a few soldiers walking by to leave through the front door. Once they passed, Clint let his fingers drift to his anchor and he looked through the building. 

Fury had an office on the fourth floor and usually took his meetings there but the room was void of any thoughts or scents of people when Clint’s mind reached it. Phil didn't have an office, preferring to work at his apartment on the base or spend his time in Tony's office working out plans with him and Bruce.

“Too bad no psys have figured out how to walk through walls yet,” Bucky half-whispered, standing on Clint’s left side as they tried to look as inconspicuous as possible in the lobby of the administration building. 

Clint snorted to himself, “Nah, I bet someone has figured it out, just keeping it to themselves.”

“Assholes.”

Clint searched further. Phil built good psychic walls, but they weren’t that good, not good enough to hide him and Fury completely and definitely not good enough to keep Clint from at least catching a scent of where they might be. 

“If you can’t find Phil, maybe someone else heard something?” Bucky tried. Clint fluttered his hand back at Bucky to try and get him to stop talking and shook his head as he leapfrogged down from the fourth floor conference room to the break room on the third floor. 

_C’mon, Phil. Where are you? What happened?_ Clint pushed these thoughts to the front of his search. He read through the people scattered around the third floor, hopped from one mind to another until he found what he was looking for. 

“Got him.”

Bucky perked up, “Really? Where?” 

Clint looked around the lobby to try and see if anyone had noticed that he and Bucky were clearly up to something before grabbing Bucky’s wrist to pull him towards the door that led to the stairwell, “There’s only one room in this whole building that has people in it that I can’t read into. It’s like I can feel someone there but not hear them. Somebody saw Phil and Fury go in there,” Clint said, hushed and low, as they started heading up the stairs. Bucky opened his mouth to ask what Clint meant but Clint cut him off. 

“You know how the networks work, right? And that Tony had one?” Clint asked, not looking back as they bounded up the stairs two at a time, he could sense Bucky’s acknowledgement, “The last time I hung out in his office he told me that he was trying to reverse-engineer it or something and build the same tech into rooms and buildings, to hide it or whatever. It’s like the technopath version of what an illusionist can do,” they reached the door that opened up to the third floor, “Didn’t know he’d actually built it out anywhere though.” 

To be honest, Clint thought it was all still hypothetical. It was hard to tell with Tony, what was just ranting and what would actually come to fruition. 

But here Clint and Bucky were, approaching an entire room that Tony had outfitted with its very own network, because that was a thing he could apparently do now in between all the other pieces of matter in the universe he'd been concerning himself with this summer while Clint watched from the corner.

The floor was quiet, a few people working with their heads down barely noticed Clint and Bucky slinking down the halls, the person who noticed Fury and Phil had only seen them in passing and had quickly moved along into their own office, “Must be bad if they don’t want other people hearing,” Bucky mumbled. 

Clint nodded in agreement. 

He could tell Phil and Fury were in the room as they approached it, but there was nothing to be heard on the other side of the door. 

_Phil?_

Silence washed over Clint and Bucky in the hallway and Clint tried again, sought out the energy that a person put off no matter what kind of tech was trying to hide it and pushed his thoughts towards that. 

_Stop it._

Clint stumbled back into Bucky, thankfully only crashing them both into the wall instead of into the ground.

“Clint? What was that?” Bucky asked, steadying Clint with his hand to stand him back up on his own two feet. 

Clint took in a deep breath, “Phil definitely knows we’re out here now.” 

“We in trouble?” 

He shrugged, “Not sure. I haven’t heard anything else besides him telling me to stop trying to get in,” Clint slid down to sit back against the wall, Bucky plopped down to join him, “We might as well wait here now.” 

Surprisingly enough they didn’t have to wait long. After a few minutes of the two of them sitting outside the door it opened abruptly to reveal Fury glaring down at them before grunted, “Get in here, then,” and stepping out of the way so Bucky and Clint could scrambled up to their feet and shuffle into the room. 

Clint finally got a good look at Phil. He looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes that weren’t typically there and his skin was pal, his jaw set tight. He was wearing the same dark wash jeans and black t-shirt Clint had seen him leave in except now it was all wrinkled and ill fitting on Phil’s frame. There were two bottles of water and a half eaten sandwich on the table he and Fury had been sitting at and he’d even gone so far as to take off his boots, leaving them haphazardly on the floor underneath the chair he was still seated at. 

“Phil?” Clint tried. 

Bucky followed up behind him, “What happened?” 

Phil was hunched over in the chair he was sitting in, another thing unlike the person Clint had gotten used to. He reached for the water bottle closest to him and took a sip before finally answering. 

“We were trying to track down a kid who’d been taken to New York, Tony found them in the same training center as you,” Phil didn’t look up but he nodded his head towards Clint, “We should’ve called in more help,” He whispered. 

“You followed protocol, Coulson,” Fury said firmly from his spot near the door, his arms crossed over his chest. 

“They’d left the kid alone in a corner room for over three days, they were starving and it didn’t look like anyone was coming by anytime soon.” 

Clint shuffled his feet and twisted his hands together, thankful that it seemed as if putting a network on a room also kept the people inside from reading each other. He didn’t want Phil to be reliving Clint’s bullshit while also still dealing with his own. Instead, “Yeah, that’s a favorite there.” 

Phil nodded and finally looked up at Clint, “Tony told me.” 

He sighed, “They must’ve known we were coming. Maybe their tech has gotten better or, we didn’t move fast enough… I don't know what. We slipped up and Tony didn’t want to leave without the kid, but it wouldn’t do anyone any good if we were both stuck there.” 

“But how did they take him?” Bucky questioned. 

“We’d gotten into the room, but the kid wasn’t alone. The East has some damn good illusionists.”

Clint’s head snapped up, “Loki?” 

Phil rubbed his face roughly and nodded, “He was too busy trying to hypnotize the kid to work on us but he tripped an alarm. Tony thought,” he paused, “I can’t actually _imagine_ what he was thinking, but he said he had a better chance of getting the kid out than I did. Jackass. I left the way we came in and barely got out under their surveillance.” 

“If Tony had gotten the kid out, he would’ve called by now, like he did with Bucky,” Clint tried, “Shouldn’t somebody go back?” 

At this point, Fury stepped in, crossing the room to grab a newspaper off the table that had been on the far side from Phil. It was a regional paper that Clint recognized from the newspaper stands at the register of Steve’s old corner store. Clint squinted his eyes to look at the screaming headline _Western Psy Attempts to Kidnap Young Child Outside NYC_. 

“That isn’t what happened,” Bucky looked between Fury and Phil, “And it wasn’t their kid, anyway! They’re the ones doing the kidnapping!” He gestured at Clint as proof. 

“It doesn’t matter, Buck,” Clint muttered. Bucky shot him a glare, “Before you found me, did you even know that kids in the West were getting taken? Did you read that in the paper or hear about it at school?” 

Bucky looked down at the floor and back up, shook his head. 

“They’ll make people believe what they want,” Phil and Fury were looking at Clint now, “But we still can’t leave Tony there, so what’s the plan?” 

For the first time since Phil had pulled up on the base and Clint had seen his face, Phil finally looked relieved, “I was hoping you’d say that.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes work is so busy I can't even be bothered to even engage with any creative content, much less create my own LOL but here I am! And here you are! And here's a chapter!

“Stop it.” 

Clint huffed and glared across the table at Natasha. After a few seconds he plastered a fake smile across his face and went back to peeling the potato in his hand, “Stop what?” Natasha rolled her eyes. 

“No one is going to let you go back to New York to help get Tony,” she finally said, “So, stop it with the sad looks and the pouting.” 

“She's right,” Steve called from the couch, turning another page in his book. 

“I'm not pouting,” Clint tried to say it with a definitive tone of voice but Natasha scoffed and Steve had the audacity to bark out a laugh. Clint glared at Natasha and then turned to give the same glare to the back of Steve’s head. 

“So Bucky didn't tell me this morning that you came in last night pissed that you helped Phil and Fury with their little rescue plan and then they sidelined you?” Natasha asked.

“Bucky's a traitor and I'm not upset,” Clint dropped his knife and let the stupid potato roll across the kitchen table. He didn't cross his arms across his chest because none of this is pouting. Clint isn't pouting, he's too old to pout. 

Instead, he stood up from the table, “I need some air.” 

Seconds later he was rolling down the steps from their front door, foregoing his shoes tucked neatly in the doorway, and headed down the street. The small apartment they'd been set up with on the base was situated on a street lined with about ten other apartments of the same style. A few small cottages on the other side of the street. The street led down to the main part of the base, barely a two minute walk away. 

It was late afternoon and Clint was walking against the current of soldiers, their families and civilians who were headed home after a day of work as he headed out of their little neighborhood. 

He was pouting. And he had been pouting last night when he complained to Bucky that he had given Phil and Fury _everything_ he knew about Loki and the training center only to have them ice him out from being involved in getting Tony back. 

Clint wanted to go on the mission. 

Correction, Clint _had_ to go on the mission. 

Not just because he'd given them even more information than when they first pulled him out of New York but because Clint owed Tony. He'd feel the same way if something happened Steve, Natasha, Bucky or Phil. If he could help any of them, he should. It's only fair after everything they'd all done for him. 

Also, as if they even needed reminding of this fact, but Clint wasn't just a normal kid. He could find a person from 50 miles away just by their thoughts. He could manipulate enough energy to knock down seven jackboot thugs from Pierce’s team at once. 

It wasn't like Clint was the number one enhanced kid in the world or something, but he wasn't useless to them either. 

Fury had said it was because Clint was too young and not even employed by the military. He'd forgotten to mention that he thought Clint was too close to the whole situation to be reliable. 

Clint heard it anyway, of course. 

Apparently, it didn't matter that Phil was on the team with Tony that lost him, or that Fury was his boss, or even that Bruce and Tony were best friends. They all got to be on the team and help bring him back. 

Pointing all that out only got Clint shown the door. 

“Weird to see you walking around here without Bucky.”

Clint realized then that he hadn’t been wearing the anchor from Phil. It was probably for the best since Clint would most likely toss it at the man now that they were in close proximity and no one was around to tell Clint he was being ‘childish’ or anything else. He pulled up a few walls around his thoughts and pretended he hadn’t heard Phil come up. 

Phil gave him a minute before sighing, “The silent treatment, really?” 

Clint shrugged, “He's playing soccer with some kids from the other side of the base.” He dug his toes into the grass and looked up at Phil, standing on the sidewalk.

“That’s good,” Phil nodded, “It’s good for you guys to make friends out here.” 

Clint looked down at the ground and switched to digging his heel into the grass, grinding it until he felt the dirt beneath it. 

“I know you’re mad. I know you helped us out a lot and now you feel like we kicked you to the curb.”

“You _did_ kick me to the curb,” Clint mumbled. 

“Ok,” Phil offered, “But you do understand why, don’t you?” 

Clint stopped digging into the earth, “I’m a kid and I’m not employed by the military anyway. You guys think I’m too emotional or too attached or too whatever to go even though I know more about that training center and those assholes than any of you do. Even though _you’re_ the one who left Tony there in the first place!” 

He knew that he’d hit a sore spot. Well, more like what was still an open wound for everyone involved. Phil was quiet for a moment, “It’s not fair to make you go back there.” 

“Life’s not fair,” Clint scoffed. 

“You really want to go?” Phil asked, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. 

“I want to help,” Clint said firmly, “You know I’d be good out there. You know I can do it.” 

Phil nodded to himself and looked down at the concrete sidewalk. Clint stayed out of his mind and kept to himself while he waited for Phil to speak again. 

“You know,” Phil started, “I actually wasn’t going to come down this way. I figured you’d be pissed off still. But,” He reached into his pocket and held whatever he’d dug out tightly in his hand, “I was in Tony’s office earlier and I found these on his desk. Tony never stops working, you know that.” 

Phil held out his hand, a small black box in his palm. Clint stepped forward and took it without touching Phil, stepping back to maintain the distance they had. Phil on the sidewalk and Clint on the grass. 

Clint opened the box to reveal, “What is it?” 

“It’s a hearing aid. I knew Tony was working on it, but I didn’t know he’d finished. If the rest of his work is anything to go by, it shouldn’t need much adjusting.” 

Clint stuffed the now empty box in his pocket and turned the hearing aid over in his hands. He noticed a small, silver disc sticking out of the back of the piece he assumed was meant to go over his ear and pushed it in. 

As he slid that part over his ear, and gently pushed the in-ear part in, he noticed quickly how many noises he’d been missing on his right side. People talking as they walked past, the leaves in the tree next to them being rustled by the wind, a car engine turning over. 

He still had one question, “Why’s it this ugly bright purple?” 

Clint heard Phil’s laugh, sharp and a touch louder than before, “Guess you’re going to have to ask him that yourself when you see him.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I went on a (pandemic safe) trip to see my parents for the first time in 8 months and I didn't write anything but now I'm back and here we are with our boys and their ~*feelings*~

“I don’t want you to go,” Bucky mumbled into sheets, his eyes squeezed shut. 

A hot breeze blew in through the open window, only serving to remind Clint and Bucky that even though it was the middle of the night it was much too hot to be sharing a bed. They were anyway. Both in shorts, the blanket pushed to the floor, and each damp from their cold showers that only served to cool them off for a few minutes before they’d silently gotten into Clint’s bed anyway. 

“It’ll be fine, Buck. You know I’ll come back,” Clint answered, lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

Bucky opened his eyes and pinched Clint’s side, Clint squawked and shuffled away from Bucky, pushing his back up against the wall to get away as Bucky grumped, “I know you’ll come back, idiot.” 

“Then what’s the problem?”

Bucky sighed, “Everytime we’re apart stuff gets worse.” 

“That’s not totally true,” Clint tried, even though he knew he would probably lose this conversation, “How many months did we go between summers growing up and things went over fine? It’s just… the last couple times apart that things sucked.”

“Right,” Bucky scoffed, “Sucked is a good word for you getting kidnapped and tortured for a year and me losing my arm. Did you know that’s exactly what they put in the dictionary next to the word?” 

Clint shoved at Bucky, “Brat.”

“I'm serious,” Bucky said after a beat. 

“I know.” 

They fell back into silence after that as Clint tried to ignore the sweat slowly trickling down his neck from his hairline. If anything, it might be cooler in New York. At the very least he'd be in air conditioned vehicles all the way to it and the training center itself was always set at a casual Freeze-Your-Fingers-Off temperature the entire time Clint had been there.

“I don't want to upset your hero complex or whatever, but you know they can get Tony back without you, right?” Bucky asked.

Clint shrugged, feeling the sheets stick to his back. He closed his eyes when he felt Bucky shifting next to him to sit up, his aforementioned one arm planted firmly on the mattress next to Clint’s side to keep him upright and from toppling off the bed. 

_I know_. 

Bucky groaned and nudged Clint with his closest foot, “Don't do that.” 

_Do what?_

Clint didn't open his eyes and Bucky blew out a frustrated breath, “Act like a toddler about to throw a tantrum.” 

“I'm not mad,” Clint grumbled out loud after clearing his throat, “And I know they can get Tony without me, that's not the point.” 

“So what is the point? Why are you going when you could just as easily stay here with me, where we’re both safe for the first time in years?” 

At that, Clint finally opened his eyes and set them on Bucky. He was peering down at Clint in the dark and thanks to the street light outside, Clint could see just enough of Bucky's face to determine how annoyed he actually was. As kids grown ups had always said it was Clint who wore his emotions on his sleeve but Bucky was no brick wall. For the longest time there had never been an instance where Clint _needed_ to read Bucky’s mind to know what he was thinking.

Bucky was terrified and pissed and Clint didn't answer.

“You're not going because you want to save Tony,” Bucky started, turning his face to look out the window behind them, “You're going because you wanna get back at Loki.” 

Clint rolled over onto his side to face the wall. He felt Bucky shifting again in the bed and yelped when Bucky grabbed him by the shoulder to flip him roughly back onto his back and held him in place. Bucky had Clint in a near chokehold and if Clint pulled himself out from under his grip, Bucky would lose his balance and most definitely end up on the floor. Instead Clint hissed, “So what if I am?! What's wrong with that?” 

“Are you kidding me?” Bucky dug his fingers deep into Clint’s skin and glared at him, “You’re going to go on this mission and _what_? When they turn left to go find Tony you’re gonna turn right to track down Loki?” He was on a roll now and Clint grunted as Bucky’s fingers went deep, pressing between his collarbone and his neck, “He’s a hypnotist, idiot! You think he won’t try and ruin you _again_ the first chance he gets?” 

“Fuck off,” Clint bit back, squirming even as Bucky put more of his weight onto Clint. 

“You’re gonna fuck up this mission and get someone killed all because you need to have the last word,” It wasn’t a question but Clint could hear it anyway. For a brief moment he wondered if Phil had been able to pick up on this plan as well, even though he’d locked it all up tight behind walls and barriers and smokescreen in his mind. If Loki had taught him anything… 

“You don’t know what he did to me,” Clint mumbled, “What he did to Barney, and my parents.” 

Bucky refused to let up, “I don’t need to know, Clint! It’s not worth it!” 

“Barney died thinking I killed our parents, Buck,” Clint tested Bucky’s hold and lifted his head off the bed to look him in the eyes, “Because Loki told him so. I can’t bring Barney back, I know I can’t, ok? But I can’t spend the rest of my life knowing that I didn’t make him pay when I could.” 

“So it's revenge?” Bucky choked, “You’re gonna put everyone who saved us; me, you, Steve, Natasha? You’re gonna put the people who saved all of us in danger for _revenge_?” 

If Clint had been wearing a shirt Bucky would’ve grabbed him by the collar, shaken him until whatever Bucky thought was true, or right, or honorable, sunk into Clint’s brain through his thick skull. He could see exactly what Bucky wanted to do. 

Until it shifted. The thoughts Clint could see became fuzzy until Bucky’s mind was nearly blank for the first time since Clint had known him. Instead of decking Clint, Bucky sat back and pulled Clint up with him. On instinct Clint reached up to grab Bucky by what remained of his left arm and shoulder to steady Bucky so they wouldn’t both fall off the bed. 

“I didn’t think you were that stupid,” Bucky spit but the fire gone and this time it was his turn to try and pull away from Clint. Clint kept his grip on Bucky’s shoulder and reached up with his other hand to close around his forearm to try and pull Bucky’s hand away from where he was still holding on. 

Clint leaned forward and pressed his forehead up against Bucky’s. They were both panting by now, hotter than before and Clint could feel the sweat along Bucky’s skin, “We’re gonna get Tony back, and I’m going to make Loki pay for what he did to my family. Please, you have to believe me.” 

Against everything in Clint that told him to reach out and listen to what Bucky was thinking he pulled back and looked into Bucky’s eyes. This close he could see all the emotions flashing across Bucky’s face and he waited until he felt his fingers loosen. Clint kept his hand on Bucky’s arm and sighed. 

“I don't want you to go,” Bucky whispered, just loud enough for Clint to hear him. 

Clint nodded against Bucky, their foreheads still touching, “I know. But I’ll come back, I promise.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A while ago I think I told someone that I was hoping for this to be around 24 chapters? That is still the case! We're almost there! Enjoy!

Clint shifted in his seat and closed his eyes, letting his hands relax and lay easily in his lap. He slipped into the guard’s mind easily. Clint doesn’t remember this guard from his own time at the training center, but they’re just as blank and formless as all the other ones that Clint only saw for moments at a time. Anyone that wasn’t Rumlow, Clint easily forgot. 

The training center was still blocked, shrouded by whatever illusionist the government forced into the role, but at some point guards and cafeteria workers and secretaries had to go home and others had to take their place.

The cover over the training center was strong but it tapered out quickly once you got past the grounds and only stretched out a quarter-mile into the woods before disappearing conveniently on the closest two lane highway. No one had yet noticed the black SUV in the service pull-out with its lights off another half-mile down the road, stuffed full of Western soldiers and two telepaths. 

“Clint, you got that guard?” Phil asked. Clint nodded. 

“It’s shift change, I’ll grab the next one and see what I can find.”

Clint would nod again but he was already filtering out any useless information from his no-name guard as they walked along the shoulder of the highway to the closest bus stop. All the shit that goes on at that training center and the East couldn’t pay enough for a guard to own a car? 

Clint scoffed to himself. 

He’d never tried this before. In the past, he had traced from one person to another, that was pretty simple. Like when he had found Ross’s wife by searching his thoughts from the day and following them to their logical conclusion, or when he had sussed out undercover psys for Pierce by jumping from mind to mind of anyone who even had a passing interaction with them that day. 

But this was more complicated. It was one guard on an empty stretch of highway, a guard who had likely never seen Tony, or if they had, they wouldn’t have even noticed it. One chance to slide from one mind to another under the nose of an illusionist into the training center. 

Once Clint could get past the barriers he could find out where they were keeping Tony and based on previous intelligence they would know where to strike.

The last person the guard saw before they left was the person watching the security cameras and keeping an entrance and exit log of the center.

( _“What’s the point of the security cameras if we already have one of those side-show freaks keeping the place out of people’s eyes and ears?” The guard had laughed as they walked through the main lobby._

_“I dunno, man. But, a jobs a job, I’ll take what I can get, y’know?” The other responded, not looking up from the round of tetris they were playing on one of the computer screens._

_The guard laughed again, “Don’t I know it. Have a good night, Jason!”_

_“You too, Taylor.”_ )

Bingo. 

Clint leapt from the guard’s mind, _Taylor_ , to the one in the training center lobby. He felt the friction of the illusionist’s guardrails push against him but the memory was recent enough and strong enough that Clint slipped under and quickly found purchase with the other guard, still playing tetris by the looks of it. 

Shift change meant there were lots of people wandering in and out of the lobby, passing easy greetings before they put on their uniforms to walk into work. As Clint mind-hopped deftly, he could feel the familiar pull of Phil’s own thoughts following closely behind through the lobby. Clint finally found a guard keeping watch in a long stretch of hallway and he anchored himself there. 

“Phil,” Clint mumbled, “You in?” 

“Scanning the wing on the south side,” Phil responded from miles away. 

Clint hummed to himself distantly, “Back hall, center wing.”

Someone, not Phil, responded. Clint didn’t pick it up, tying himself up tightly with the guard he’d found, barely heard someone hiss at the soldier for speaking. 

_Do you feel that?_ Clint reverted to his telepathy, careful to open up the lines of this conversation as far away from his anchor guard as possible. They might be easy to slip in and out of but any normal guard or soldier with a touch of enhanced training would notice if someone was trying to speak to them. 

_One of the rooms is empty_ , Phil answered. 

Clint shook his head, _not empty_.

Empty of tech, yes. Not empty of people. 

Along with the guard monitoring the hallway, every cell had a camera, Clint remembered that. 

Every cell except this one. This one didn’t even have the modern locks they used. Instead, the door had a deadbolt, a lock on the handle, and a rough looking chain across the top. 

To make up for the lack of the camera, there was a second guard in the hallway that Clint had hardly noticed. One guard, the one Clint had tied himself to, stood watch outside the tech-free cell while the other paced the rest of the hall slowly. 

“That’s gotta be Tony,” Phil said out loud. 

_But I can’t hear him. He’s there, but_ … Clint trailed off. 

Tony was there, that much was clear. Technopaths were rare, but they would know how to handle keeping one locked up. If Tony was there, Clint should be able to read him just like anyone else in the center. 

“If he’s unconscious, that would explain the lack of thoughts for once,” Phil quipped. 

Clint kept looking around, scanning the other enhanced that were locked up in the other cells, flipping through thoughts and memories of the two guards to see what they remembered. 

“Clint, pull out,” Clint shook his head. 

“We know where he is, we have the blueprints and the infiltration plan. You’re done, you’re good. Pull out.”

After a few moments, Clint did what he was told. He traced his way back out the center and let go of the anchor points he’d tied himself to along the way. Once he was fully back into the SUV he turned to look at Phil. 

“What now?” Clint asked. 

“We go in through the illusionist weak point that they _somehow_ still haven’t fixed and come in from the northwest corner. Incapacitate those two guards and get Tony out. It’s late evening, even after the shift change they usually have less staff on hand, it won’t be clean but we’ll get Tony out,” Phil recited easily, pulling on a bulletproof vest and sliding a handgun into one of the side holsters once one of the soldiers handed it to him from the the row behind them. 

“What about me?”

“You’re done. You did what you came here to do, you found Tony. You’re staying here.”

Clint twisted in his seat to glare at Phil, “You’re benching me?”

“Clint,” Phil sighed, “This is a military operation, you’re a child. I can’t take you into a raid. You know that.” 

“I know this place better than any of you or whatever your stupid blueprints say. I’ve been here, I was here for a year, in case you somehow forgot again!” 

Clint kept his eyes on Phil, ignoring the soldiers that had paused in their prepwork to watch the two arguing in the middle of the van. Phil kept moving, tightening the straps on his vest and reaching down to check on his shoes. 

“Fury and I were clear, you could come to help us find Tony but you’re not a soldier and you’re not going in. Robertson,” Phil snapped at the soldier in the driver’s seat, “Stay with Clint, don’t let him out of your sights.” 

Before Phil could duck out of the car, Clint reached out and grabbed Phil’s shoulder to pull him back. 

“If I can’t go in why didn’t you just leave me at the safe house? Or better yet, why didn’t you leave me at the base?” he bit in anger. 

“You really have to ask me that?” Phil asked, turning to look back at the soldiers emptying out onto the road, ready to go in. 

Clint held his glare steady and nodded.

“It would’ve taken me hours to try and get in without anyone noticing. Hell, just the jump from our outside guard to the front desk would’ve been a challenge without you,” Phil huffed, Clint could sense a bit of annoyance oozing out of the words, “You got in with one guard, one try. You’re great at what you do and in a couple of years, if you still want to, you can do even more. But right now, I can’t take you in there. It’s not worth it, not even for Tony.” 

For a second Clint wondered if Phil knew that Clint wanted to try and track down Loki. A quick search didn’t reveal anything and even if Phil wanted to say that Clint was a good telepath, Phil was even better when it came to hiding things. Clint still had the scars to remind him of the aftermath of the first time they’d met and Phil hid arguably the most important thing from him. 

While Clint was thinking Phil had pulled his shoulder out of Clint’s grip and slid out of the car, double checking with the other soldiers around him that they were all prepared. He spared one last look at Clint and at the soldier, Robertson, that would be left behind. 

“Please stay here, Clint. Please,” Phil said seriously, “I refuse to go back to Montana and tell them that I lost you too.” 

Phil shut the side door of the SUV and Clint watched the group disappear past the treeline.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I feel like I'm (as my coworker would say) getting 'lost in the sauce' when I'm writing this. There's just a lot happening and I'm hopeful that it's making sense and isn't just a word jumble. Thanks for reading!

“Hey kid? Keep pacing, that'll _definitely_ bring the team back faster.” 

Clint shot a glare back at the soldier who was idly tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, one leg hanging out the open driver’s side door, while he watched Clint dig the toe of his boot into the ground to turn around again. 

“Shut up,” that was a weak retort, but Clint didn't care. 

“Who's mind did you slip into this time?” He asked, raising his hands defensively in the air when Clint started to deny that he was following the team, “Coulson warned me about you and there's no way you'd accept sitting out here so easily unless you knew you could keep an eye on things. Who is it?” 

Clint hadn't actually bothered to learn the name of the soldier he'd created a link with before Phil and his team slipped under the barrier hiding the training center from view.

After a second he sighed and answered, “Lopez, why? You know her?”

“She's good,” Robertson shrugged, “Does Coulson know you're spying?” 

“Probably.” 

Clint kept watching the team. It was easy enough to slip into the soldier's mind without her noticing. The SUV was small once you packed in a bunch of full grown soldiers with their gear and weapons, there was no personal space. Lopez has been sitting next to him and it was deceptively simple to brush her arm in the shuffle and find her thoughts before they went under the cover in the forest. 

She was in the back of the formation, watching the hallways behind the team with a second soldier, sweeping after the group. They were slowly working through to the back of the center where Clint had spotted the room devoid of tech. 

They'd only encountered resistance from a small flank of guards in the right corner of the compound a few minutes after they'd broken through the weak spot in the illusionist barriers. Clint could see from Lopez’s point of view that the cameras were still operational, twisting and turning to follow their movement down the hallways but they hadn't seen any more guards. Not even in the hallways Clint had seen that were full of prisoners lining each cell. 

Clint didn't need to be a mind reader to know that if this raid wasn't about Tony, Phil would've already turned around. 

_It's a set up._

No one said it out loud, but they were all thinking it. 

_“Clear,”_ Coulson whispered, at the head of the pack, _“Marcus, flank right, two doors down. Lopez, Garrison, cover.”_

The team was soon making quick time down the hall Clint had found earlier. 

Each typical cell door was locked with a thumbprint lock set to a few specific guards, a keypad and a physical lock. Tony’s door had the physical lock along with two deadbolts and a padlock holding a metal rod in place across the door attached to the wall.

Clint, mostly out of annoyance and spite, hadn’t been paying attention when Phil composed his team. In the process of getting to the training center he’d quickly discovered that aside from Clint and Phil there were only two other psys on the team. One was a low-level telepath who could only speak to animals and the other was telekentic. Clint had watched her snap the wires on the fence outside the training center and she was the one who took out the last of the guards with a well-timed bodyslam. 

She made quick work of the padlock and Clint saw her hand squeeze tight around the air as one of the deadbolts cracked through Lopez’s back and forth view.

Clint could hear the door swing open as Robertson hissed, “Where are they now?” Clint kept his sights ahead of himself, staring where he knew the invisible building should be and waved his hand dismissively behind him towards the soldier. 

_“I figured Fury’d give you a team, Coulson. My knight in shining armor,”_ Tony’s voice was far away and full of annoyance. Clint didn’t want to risk trying to jump to another soldier on the team on the off chance he lost the connection but the soldier he had chosen was still in the back of the team, almost like all her information was second-hand. 

There was a wordless grunt from somewhere in the cell and Clint could hear Coulson clear his throat, _“And you knew I’d come even if he didn’t.”_

Clint knew he had missed something, being in the mind of a non-enhanced soldier, when a third voice spoke. Phil and Tony must’ve switched to speaking telepathically, or arguing via silent facial expressions like they did on the base sometimes. The voice was clear and Clint knew who it was the second they started speaking. 

_“You knew it was a set up from the beginning, yet you continued happily on your merry way, all for your mouthy technopath?”_

Lopez shifted, both for what looked to be a better view of the cell and a better view of the hallway, to continue covering the hallway in case they were interrupted. What sucked about mind reading is that it wasn't mind control, Clint had no control of what he would see. 

All he'd seen so far was a quick flash of Tony, tied tightly to a chair some six feet away from Phil.

And Loki behind him. 

_“Loki? Thor's brother?”_ Phil asked, Lopez kept her eyes trained on the doorway but she could still hear Loki's scoff from inside the room. 

_“Our guest here did say my brother had involved himself in this, although he also said you weren't stupid enough to come back here a third time…”_

Clint could imagine Tony plastering on a shit-eating grin that was worse than his own before he responded, _“I've been known to be wrong, it's fine to admit those sorts of things, isn't it Coulson?”_

_“Are you ok, Tony?”_

_“Just peachy, Coulson.”_

Clint heard the shuffling of the team, saw Lopez trade with the other soldier in the back with her, letting him cover the doorway and the hall while she trained her gun over Phil’s shoulder and aimed it towards Loki. 

_“We only encountered a small group of resistance,”_ Phil started, _“They don't know we're here. Is that you?”_

Clint couldn't clarify who Phil had directed that question at, but through Lopez’s eyes Tony and Loki smiled at the same time. Clint dug his fingers into the part of the anchor in the palm of his hand and tried to keep his breathing normal so the soldier still with him wouldn't notice.

Tony was cracking jokes, and he looked mostly unharmed but that smile, and the fact that he shared it with Loki, made it clear that Loki wasn’t just having a normal conversation between his captive and their rescuer. 

Phil noticed too, he lowered his gun and held his hands at his side, easy and calm, _“You got us here. Left your weak spot open, distracted over half this facility to get us here. You know what we want, you must want something in return.”_

_“It can't be that difficult to imagine what I might want in exchange for letting you storm the gates of the castle here so easily.”_

_“You want us to get you out?”_

Lopez whipped her head around just in time to catch Loki’s feral grin and Phil’s deceptively passive face. Saw just enough to finally speak, loud enough for everyone to hear, _“If you're capable of all this, tricking the cameras and all the lies… Why can't you get yourself out?”_

Loki laughed, sharp and loud enough to bang around the cell and out into the hallway, _“You would think it was that simple, wouldn’t you?"_

_“It’s a decent question. All this time, they said you’ve been here for years and we get in here just like that to pull you out. It can’t be this easy,”_ Lopez eyed Phil, _“Sir, it can’t be that easy.”_

Clint suddenly thought back to the brief few weeks, before more kids started to go missing, where getting Loki out was the plan. Did Tony tell him about that? Did Loki pull it out of Tony’s head like he’d done to Clint and countless other psys from the West? Did Loki know that those other kids were more important than bringing him home? That no one even thought of rescuing him until they found out about Clint?

Did Loki actually want to be saved, after all that? There was no way Clint could tell. 

_“Let’s go, then. You’re with us.”_


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reasons it's taken me longer than usual to put out this chapter 
> 
> 1\. I wrote myself into a hole and, as one of my coworkers would say, got "lost in the sauce" so I'm trying to get myself out of it.   
> 2\. The holidays were nice and I didn't feel like writing. Instead I caught up on A LOT of reading.   
> 3\. If you've turned on the news um.. at all the past week and a half you might know that there was an attempted right-wing coup/insurrection/riot (pick your poison) in Washington, D.C. and I happen to live in Washington, D.C. because it's a place people live and not just where government happens. I'm fine, everyone I know is fine it's just... a lot. 
> 
> Anyway, here's a chapter, I'm still hoping for this story to be around 25-27 chapters in total but we'll see! Enjoy!

“Are you kidding me?” Clint snarled, turning around to stare into the empty forest ahead of the SUV.

“What now?” 

“No way! No _fucking_ way!” Clint shouted, ignore the soldier who’d seemed shocked enough to turn and face Clint fully while still sitting in the driver’s seat. 

Clint jumped from Lopez, who somehow still hadn't realized through all the chaos that Clint was using her mind as a free ride into what was happening, to Phil, opening up the line of communication. Clint could tell the second Phil realized that he was sharing his mindspace with someone else. Not like it mattered, Phil was still resolutely ignoring him. 

_You've got to be kidding me._

Phil gave no response as Clint watched him and the team move quickly down the halls. Clint pushed again only to be pushed back.

_Clear out, Clint. Or I'll do it for you._

Clint anchored himself firmly to Phil’s thoughts and shook his head to himself. 

_No. What are you doing?_ Why _are you doing this?_

He felt himself getting the boot from Phil's thoughts before he could do anything about it, his mind skipping out and losing ground, unable to find an anchor to any of the other soldiers in the group. 

The training center was gone, Clint could no longer see anything or anyone that was moving inside the building. The shift change was over and there was no one around for miles.

“God dammit,” Clint muttered, rubbing his forehead. He could feel Robertson’s interest reaching out, overpowering his own ability to clear his mind. Clint sighed, “They’re coming out with Tony. And Loki.” 

The soldier let out a whistle but didn’t say anything else as they waited and watched for the groups return. 

Letting go of his attempts to find a mind to read allowed Clint to think about what he was going to do next. The chance of him getting Phil and the others to leave Loki on the side of the road seemed slim, and idiotic. Leaving Loki to roam free, even in the East, was a recipe for disaster. 

Clint felt the warmth of psychic energy build up in his hands, dialing into his anger and being supported by the focus his anchor provided. 

The energy had built up to an almost unbearable state even before he saw the group emerge from the tree line of the forest. It was wild and angry and Clint forces it into a tight ball, cackling in his hand. 

He didn’t let it drop once he saw them. 

The first person to speak, of course, was Tony, “Stand down, kid!” He called from across the road. Tony must’ve been able to feel that Clint was wearing the hearing aid, his voice carrying easy enough that Clint didn’t even have to strain to try and hear. 

As soon as Clint spotted Loki, tucked in between Lopez and an unnamed guard, the energy he'd been harnessing as well as he could sparked out, burning a scorch mark into the asphalt near Loki’s feet. It didn't wipe the pleased look off his face. 

“Coulson, did you bring a second vehicle or are we going to have to separate these two?” Tony was undeterred. Now that they were closer, and Clint wasn't seeing the world through someone else's eyes, he could tell how rough a time Tony'd had at the center. 

He was still wearing the same clothes Clint had watched him leave in days before, stripped of any tactical gear and down to his loose black t-shirt and pants. The neck of his shirt was stretched out, exposing a dark bruise along his collar bone to match the black eye that was just now turning yellow and green along the edges. Tony’s wrists were red and rubbed raw from the handcuffs and Clint absentmindedly rubbed his own wrists in memory.

Outside of his control, the energy spread out of his hand again, and he barely registered Tony's exhausted sigh and Phil's glare suspended between Clint and the rest of the group. 

“How about Clint and I take the back row and Loki rides near the front with his two buddy bodyguards,” Tony quipped, voice still joking and lighthearted even though now he was close enough for Clint to feel his simmering pain and exhaustion under the perpetually unreadable garble of techno-thought. 

“There's no way I'm getting in a car with _him_ ,” Clint hissed, jerking his head towards Loki, “Fuck that.”

“Clint,” Phil sighed.

“No, Phil! I got it when you said you were going to bring him back to the West, he’s one of ours or whatever, even though he’s a fucking turncoat at best, I still get it. But this?” Clint gestured at the group, at Tony who was slowly starting to look more dead on his feet and his adrenaline fading, at Loki who was unharmed and smirking behind the soldiers, “How do you even know if you made this choice on your own? He was in the same room as Tony, doing God knows what to him. Probably the same shit he did to me and a hundred other kids and you’re just… gonna walk him out into the van no problem?” 

“We really should get in the van…” Tony trailed off, listing to the side until Phil caught his elbow and held him steady. 

Clint let his energy spark out again, shattering against the ground as a warning shot when Phil tried to move them closer, “Did you even check either of them for a tracker?” Clint asked. 

“That’s… really the least of our worries,” Tony mumbled, looking back towards the forest. 

Phil let his eyes slide over to look at Tony fully before asking, “Tony, what do you mean?”

“There’s a car coming,” he paused and squeezed his eyes shut in pain for a moment, “We’ve seen every s-second of surveillance from… from outside this place and this road is dead in between shifts… No good.” 

“Clint.”

“Yeah,” Clint responded, letting his energy fade into his mind and focus on reaching out down the empty road to find the car Tony had mentioned. 

The street was a straight shot, a two lane unlit highway with a few off-shoots onto single lane dirt roads with no real turns until fifteen miles later when it hit the interstate if you turned left and continued on a dark two lane road to the south if you turned right. It was easy to feel the buzz of thoughts a few miles away from their post, barreling towards them. 

It didn’t take much longer to spot the insignia of the Eastern military on the sleeves of the men in the car and catch a memory of Tony in the mind of one of the passengers. 

“It’s the East, they’re moving fast,” there was movement behind Clint before he could even turn around. 

Phil and Tony were moving towards the car, Robertson had thrown himself back into the driver’s seat, two other soldiers were adjusting their grips on their weapons and the three nearest to Loki snatched him up by his elbows. 

One of them shook Loki in his grip, “You said you’d get us out here.” 

Loki shrugged but if Clint didn’t know any better he’d say he almost looked… nervous. Clint had never seen Loki look anything other than smug and proud since the day they met. Loki didn’t sound anything like how he looked when he responded, “I never said anything about getting anyone out of here. You wanted out with your technopath and I graciously provided that.” 

“We’ve got two minutes before we’re roadkill,” Tony said, taking a gun Phil offered from the backseat of the SUV and sliding into the car, “Time to make a choice.” 

Clint glared at Loki for one second more before getting into the backseat beside Tony.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all were so nice last time and then I paid you back by not posting for a month 😂 Deepest apologies.

“You know, the only reason we’re even out here is because you’ve _somehow_ still got a bother who gives a fuck about you. Imagine that,” Clint snapped at the back of Loki’s head as they tore off down the darkened highway. 

“Clint,” Phil warned from the front passenger seat, a tablet in his hand showing the camera attached to the back window of the SUV, his hand on the soldier driving, directing them where to go. Clint could feel the minds in the vehicle behind them, still maybe a mile away but gaining quickly. 

The car was screaming down the empty highway, lights off and no lights along the roadside either. For a second, Clint wondered just how good Coulson’s vision was and whether or not they’d even make it out of here on their own steam or just crash into an unsuspecting tree instead. 

For the first time in well over a year, Clint heard Loki’s smartly crafted response perfectly clear, “I think I preferred you when you couldn’t speak.” 

Clint did not vault over the seat and strangle Loki with his bare hands, although the amount of times he’d dreamt doing it numbered well into the double digits.

He didn’t because Tony clumsily pat blindly at his shoulder and grunted, “Normally I’d encourage this behavior. How-... however, I don’t want to spend the next,” he coughed, “The next few hours in a van covered in blood that isn’t my own.” 

Tony wasn’t even bleeding that much, Clint had seen worse, had _been_ worse but he scoffed and slid down into his seat at his request.

Most of the damage done was to Tony's mind, anyway. 

Tony normally thought in images, words were few and far between and instead of descriptive language or thoughts to describe what he was thinking the images were grand and bright and almost overwhelming. Everything moved incredibly fast, no one idea stuck around for longer than a minute or two. 

It was worse now. 

When they’d piled into the car, Clint only tried for a few seconds to see what Tony was actually thinking before the cacophony of lights, sounds, memories, feelings on and on became too much. He’d pulled out and stayed out, even when Tony bumped into him or put his hand on his arm. 

Clint knew it was bothering Tony too, that it took longer than usual to pull a thought out and put it to use. 

“Lopez, did you alert the base with our location?” Coulson called absently from the front. 

She spoke up from the row of seats behind him, “Yes, they’ll be at the drop point in about forty-five minutes.”

“They might need to send a unit out our way, I don’t want to bring our tail to our only good hiding spot in the area.”

“Coulson?”

“Just tell them they’ll need to head us off, ok?”

Coulson shot a glance back to double check that she was going to follow his direction and once she did he spared a quick glance at Clint and nodded before turning back around to pay attention to the road ahead of them. 

Clint dug his fingers into the anchor that was snug around his wrist and reached out. 

They really were in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, weren’t they? 

Once he’d found himself in the mind of the driver, now closer than they were before, Clint hooked himself to a recent scent of a memory and hunkered down. 

“ _Speed up,_ ” One of them hissed from the backseat, quiet and annoyed in the haze of the driver’s adrenaline. 

The driver didn’t respond except to push down on the gas pedal harder and hold the steering wheel tighter as it started to shake under the effort of the increased speed. Clint tried to count the people, feel out the SUV without the ability to look around. Two people in the middle row, counting the backseat driver, another three in the back row. Someone in the front seat, just like Coulson was, quiet like Couslon too. The boss? 

Clint wondered for a second if it would be worth it to jump minds and figure out what this guy knew. 

Before he could decide the driver finally spoke up, “ _We’ve got backup coming, right?_ ” 

Backseat Driver guffawed, “ _You’re scared of a few spies from the West?_ ” 

“ _They got in under our noses, stole two enhanced prisoners, and got out before we even noticed. You’re not even a little concerned we might be outgunned here?_ ” 

Clint missed Backseat Driver’s witty response due to Tony’s much louder than necessary question of, “Is that how I look when I’m in the middle of a tech binge?” directed towards Coulson. 

As far as Clint could tell no one in their SUV answered, his fingernails turning white as he jabbed them into the anchor. The driver upped the speed again and they were getting close enough now that the minds of the people following them and the minds in Clint’s own group were starting to meld together, too close to separate out. 

_I’m not dying over two prisoners._

_The back-up team definitely won’t reach us in time._

_What are we even supposed to do when we reach them? Run them off the road?_

_Wonder if they have their own back-up._

_We’re fucked._

“ _You only need to be next to them. I’ll handle the rest,_ ” The front seat passenger finally spoke up. 

Clint knew that voice. The realization was sudden and woke Clint up to the fact that he knew the voice of Backseat Driver too. A combination of his current and his past on a barren highway. 

He pulled out of the driver’s mind just enough to mumble, “Coulson.” 

“What, Clint?” 

They were close, too close. Clint felt the rumble of their SUV speeding up now that the others in the car had realized how quickly they’d been sniffed out. 

“It’s Pierce.” 

He didn’t wait for anyone’s response, instead he dug himself back into the driver’s mind and catapulted himself into the mind of Backseat Driver. Not much had changed, turns out. 

“ _I’ll handle the kid, sir?_ ” Rumlow’s voice echoed around inside Clint’s mind. 

“ _Grab the illusionist and the technopath. I’ll handle the kid._ ” 

“Barton, you’re gonna crash us before they even get the chance,” someone, Tony probably, said warily. Clint briefly wondered why before he noticed the energy he’d forced down when they’d gotten in the car was sparking across his fingers. He could only see what Rumlow saw, but he could feel the heat under his skin. 

The soldier next to Rumlow was about to speak up before Pierce cut him off, “ _Pull in front of them, run them off._ ” 

“ _Sir?_ ” The driver asked.

“ _Run. Them. Off._ ” 

Clint pulled out for real that time, opening and closing his fists a few times to keep them from cramping up. He was still crackling from the energy but this wasn’t the time to address that, “Couslon, stop the car.” 

“Are you kidding?” One of the soldiers huffed ahead of him, behind him, next to him, who cared? 

“Coulson! Stop the car!” 

Ahead of them, the bright headlights of the chase car Pierce was in illuminated everything in their path. Clint felt them shift gears and could practically see the driver jerk his steering wheel to throw themselves into their path. 

Clint had just enough time to grab Tony by the shoulder and cast out a blanket of balled up energy ahead of himself, a vague attempt to protect everyone in the vehicle from the oncoming crash, before the screeching of twisted metal and tires hit his ears.


End file.
